My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. Stanley Kubrick always tries to do unique works, he covers many genres. He had a satirical war film about Dr. Strangelove before, there was a fantastic epic “Space Odyssey”, there was an arthouse – “Clockwork Orange” and a horror film “The Shining”, now it’s time for a film about the Vietnam War.
The film is divided into 2 parts. Before and during the war. That’s the brilliant 40 minutes of this movie. This is how movies about Vietnam usually start. A man of 6 tired men wandering through the jungle, voice-over says that there is some day of war and so on, or drinking beer in a bar, as in the movie Deer Hunter, or without a military brittle officer in Apocalypse Today, in general, immediately or life or death. But nowhere is the preparation for this very war shown. That's where Kubrick did his best. Forty minutes we are shown the harsh reality, as some bastard commander caresses all his subordinates for nothing. You said something wrong, get your kidneys. Singing humiliating songs in the rain (this scene was later parodied in Major Payne). It is perfectly shown how a cruel system enslaves and kills one individual. The ending of the first part turned out simply gorgeous. The actor, who plays the role of a sergeant in this unit, perfectly performed his role. That’s exactly how I played it.
The second part, it's kind of the standard war part we've seen millions of times. Whether it’s Vietnam, World War II, or whatever, it’s almost the same thing. But what I really liked about this film is that Kubrick acts as an outside observer, in the sense that he doesn’t take a place in this war, doesn’t make himself a favorite. Here is the last scene with the sniper clearly shows it, especially the last couple of minutes of the film.
I also didn’t like the fact that it was too simple. What do I mean? The first half of the film was held as a preparation for Vietnam in the film Forrest Gump, and the second half was held as a machine gun in the film Saving Private Ryan. I don't mean it's so cool that it flies by in a second, not at all, just like it's not powerfully done. Here, for example, in the film Apocalypse Today, there are so many themes and plot moves at once that the head begins to plump, even though half of them are not completed there, and in the “shell” opposite, all the ends are rounded, but it seems that Kubrick as he began to go on some given path, so he goes the whole film. You don’t feel the complexity of human interaction with movies. That's what I think is a minus. If after the Apocalypse I was, figuratively speaking, shocked, then after the Shell I did not have such a feeling.
It was one of the best films about the Vietnam War. Although slightly flat and homogeneous, but clear and looks with pleasure.
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