Full Metal Jacket

This is a story, told from the protagonists's viewpoint (Matthew Modine as "Joker"), of his recruit training at Parris Island (USMC) and his deployment to Viet Nam during the war. The movie is split pretty evenly between boot camp and Viet Nam.

R. Lee Ermey plays the drill instructor (D.I.) of the platoon and is everything you've imagined in your nightmnares about basic training in the Marines. As the platoon moves through its training, one of the recruits Vincent D'Onofrio ("Leonard") does an excellent turn as the overweight, dumbass who is constantly getting "special attention" from the D.I.

The night before the recruits are to graduate from boot camp, Joker is on fire-watch and finds Leonard in the head with a loaded rifle in his hands. Leonard has obviously flipped-out and when the D.I. finds the recruits in the head and attempts to get the rifle away from Leonard, Leonard shoots the D.I. and then blows the back of his head off right in front of Joker.

Flash to Viet Nam. Joker is now a reporter with Stars and Stripes and is teamed up with RafterMan a photographer. They are stationed at Da Nang, and are involved in the big Tet offensive which almost overran South Viet Nam.

Joker and RafterMan head out into "the shit" and eventually link up with Cowboy, a friend of Joker's from basic training. They stay with that platoon and get into assaults on some population centers/cities. Cowboy is killed by a sniper, and Joker joins the rest of the squad in ferreting out the sniper - who turns out to be a woman.

Joker finds the sniper in a building, and when he tries to shoot her, his rifle jams. RafterMan comes along and shoots the sniper. She doesn't die right away, and the squad forms a circle around her body as she begs them to kill her. Joker reluctantly does.

The squad then rejoins their unit and are last seen marching off to what will most likely be yet another battle.

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Continuity mistake: When Gomer Pyle is in the toilet with his rifle and after shooting the drill instructor, Pyle sits down on the fourth toilet seat from the back of the room. In the next shot where Pyle kills himself, he is sitting on the third toilet seat. You can see this already from the front shot of Pyle when he kills himself because there is a rise in the wall next to the third seat, which is visible through the whole scene. It is more obvious in the following shot where you can see the row of toilet seats and Pyle sitting dead on the third one. (00:43:00 - 00:43:35)

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Trivia: Not really a mistake, given the need to maintain the story arc in the first half of the film, but in real life, Pyle would have been discharged from the Marine Corps within days of his starting basic training - for his own good. It happens all the time - dropout rate of boot camp recruits varies but is generally around 10%.

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Chosen answer: A Drill Instructor is always mad at the recruits in order to forge discipline. Private Pyle was the biggest screwup in the unit, thus creating more work for him.

Captain Defenestrator

Answer: It also promotes unity and brotherhood against a common enemy, the drill instructor.

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