Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray Movie Review

Tread lightly. Spend wisely. Enjoy immensely.

It's time to face facts: this isn't the last Full Metal Jacket Anniversary Edition release you or I are likely to buy. Even those of you who own the 2011 Stanley Kubrick Limited Edition Collection, magnificent a box set as it may be, have yet to buy your last Kubrick film. No, we'll be purchasing and re-purchasing versions of these films for decades. And you know what? I'm okay with it. Don't get me wrong, I'm no more interested in double-dip releases than the next guy, and the 25th Anniversary DigiBook release of Full Metal Jacket comes dangerously close to being a flagrant double dip. But as long as there's something new to get excited about -- even if it's just an hour-long documentary and a smartly crafted 48-page DigiBook with photos from Matthew Modine's personal collection -- I'll continue to get excited, and I'll continue to suck it up and fork over my high definition dollars for a film I've bought at least six times before. If that strikes you as foolish or reckless, your decision will be much easier: is a documentary and a DigiBook worth the cost of admission?

Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The sticker on the front of Warner's latest Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray release is a bit misleading. While the 1080p/VC-1 transfer featured in the 2012 Digibook version has certainly been created using newly remastered film elements, the use of the word "new" is meant to distance this transfer from its poorly received 2006 predecessor. For all intents and purposes, though, this is the same presentation that debuted with the 2007 Deluxe Edition Blu-ray release and subsequently repurposed for the 2011 Stanley Kubrick Limited Edition Collection box set. And that's a very good thing. There was really very little room for improvement, as most every shortcoming the presentation could be accused of having traces back to the source, Kubrick's photography, and the original elements. The softness here is filmic; the somewhat inconsistent grain inherited; the washed out palette intended. The only complaint I continue to lodge is that slight edge halos are present throughout the film, but even those are easy to overlook. It's hard to imagine Full Metal Jacket looking much better, meaning the decision to purchase this release comes down to its DigiBook packaging and bonus documentary.

Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For whatever reason, Full Metal Jacket defaults to a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mix when the movie begins. Have no fear, though. A quick trip to the menu is all it takes to engage the disc's uncompressed PCM 5.1 surround track (the same track included with the previous 2007 and 2011 releases). Dialogue is clear and intelligible, albeit thin and hollow on the whole, and effects are quite clean and pronounced, even if gunshots and other would-be jarring outbursts don't have the same kick as they would in a modern film. LFE output is sturdy and assertive, and the rear speakers field a fair amount of activity, from rolling tanks to hustling marines, machine gun sprays, passing locals, and crumbling buildings. The entire experience is still deeply rooted in the film's original mono mix, mind you, but it's nice to hear the various elements spread out as much as they are. No, the uncompressed track isn't a revelation. It's simply faithful and unpretentious, staying true to Kubrick's intentions without drifting off course.

Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that -- although it can be like trying to write "War and Peace" in a bumper car in an amusement park -- when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.

• Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (SD, 61 minutes): Boxes is a rather eccentrically produced documentary in which director Jon Ronson receives an invitation to the Kubrick estate following the famed filmmaker's death and is given the opportunity to explore thousands of boxes and catalog the contents. And while it may be a strange addition to include with the latest release of Full Metal Jacket -- more along the lines of something you'd expect to see in a new Kubrick box set than a 25th Anniversary Edition release of a single film -- it's no less welcome. Ronson discovers a great many treasures, many of which had been set aside and boxed away decades before. The contents and materials inside mainly tell stories of what happened between the making of Kubrick's films; the memos, the scraps of projects, the personal letters, the fan letters (organized by city of origin, with notes and identifying codes jotted on each one), the legal correspondences, the script dismissals and approvals, the abandoned ideas; some inconsequential, some fascinating. The care and meticulous nature of the boxes and their filing systems is well beyond obsessive, much like everything Kubrick did, and it paints a picture of a mind ever at work, even when no films were being shot and no scripts were being written. Ultimately, it's a worthwhile documentary. It's just better suited to the Kubrick completist than the casual fan.
• Full Metal Jacket Audio Commentary: Together, author/screenwriter Jay Cocks and actors Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'onofrio and Lee Ermey would have been a formidable platoon of steely eyed commentators. Recorded separately though, they never really gel as a unit. Nor do their reflections on the film or its director. Worse, like their characters, D'onofrio and Ermey disappear at the halfway point. Still, it's a passable commentary worth sampling, even if only during Full Metal Jacket's boot camp sequences.
• Between Good and Evil (SD, 31 minutes): Modine steps in with his castmates to unravel the film's development, casting, performances, behind-the-scenes conflicts, shooting challenges and, of course, Kubrick and his approach to the material, his actors and the production as a whole.
• Theatrical Trailer (SD, 2 minutes)

Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This isn't the first release of Full Metal Jacket I've added to my collection and I'm almost certain it won't be the last. In terms of new content or upgrades, the 25th Anniversary Edition DigiBook doesn't offer much more than an eccentric 60-minute Kubrick documentary (one that doesn't even focus on Full Metal Jacket) and the DigiBook itself. As a Kubrick completist of sorts, though, I wouldn't be able to resist, especially having just purchased a copy of the exhaustive 544-page "Stanley Kubrick Archives" from Taschen Books. I suspect fellow completists and those who have yet to pick up any version of Full Metal Jacket on Blu-ray will be most pleased. Most everyone else will be left wondering why we're so anxious to essentially spend money on a film we already own.