Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket is defiantly in key with some of Cinemas greatest. Kubrick divides this film into basically two (though the entire movie can sometimes be considered a multitude of separate and even loosely related "chapters") parts. The first of which takes place at the Marine boot camp on Parris Island and focuses mainly on three characters: Sergeant Hartman (Lee Ermey), a crude and harsh man that relies on systematic debasement of his men to achieve a militaristic uniformity. Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence (Vincent D"Onofrio), an oafish overweight and largely unskilled recruit who receives the full extent of the Sergeant's wrath due to his inability to perform physically or even mentally (not that mental performance is essential to the "kill, kill, kill" marine mentality ). And the Joker (Matthew Modine), an intelligent and sharp individual charged with Pyle's indented reformation (eventually one of the only links between "pt.1" and "pt.2" and possibly the "main character"). .
Throughout the first "half" of the movie (Parris Island boot camp) there are many themes of symmetry. All through the barracks and elsewhere, a lot of the camera angles/set design relies largely on the idea of symmetry to communicate the concept of uniformity, an essential element of the military training ideal. A personal favorite line that displays this uniform accepting concept is the march lyric "I love working for Uncle Sam, let's me know just who I am" Which is immediately followed with a scene of the trainees chanting "Kill, Kill, Kill" in response to the proposed question "What do marines do?".
The under performing Pyle (next to his marksmanship), after effectively pissing everyone off and being on the receiving end of a blanket party, buckles, and breaks. After graduation, the last night on the island, Pyle sits in the Head fondling his gun, and his sanity. After a brief encounter with the Joker, Pyle unloads a "Seven-Two-Six, full metal jacket" into the unrelenting Hartman, and then one into himself.
