The Complete Kubrick
Full Metal Jacket
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Synopsis
A titan of cinema whose influence extends across visual art, philosophy, politics, technology, fashion, and beyond, Stanley Kubrick created an unprecedented string of masterpieces, from Paths of Glory to Dr. Strangelove to 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut. Bending disparate genres to his will, he imbued his creations with a cuttingly ironic worldview and an iconographic, mesmerizingly precise visual style, probing the anxieties, enigmas, and horrors of the twentieth century with a coolly devastating eye. Tracing his evolution from independent maverick to Hollywood rebel to visionary transnational auteur whose every film from the mid-1960s on became a manifesto of a radically new sensibility, The Complete Kubrick brings together the entirety of a body of work that opened popular cinema up to new realms of moral profundity and metaphysical mystery.
Collected here for the first time are Kubrick’s thirteen features and three shorts, all restored in 4K, with their original soundtracks alongside the 5.1 mixes, restored and remastered; over twenty-five hours of interviews, documentaries, and behind-the-scenes materials; and deluxe packaging illustrated with rare photographs, artwork, and documents annotated by Kubrick himself, all housed in a singular box inspired by the director’s legendary archive.
Picture 10/10
The Criterion Collection presents Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket on 4K UHD with Dolby Vision on a triple-layer disc in the film's original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The title is currently exclusive to Criterion’s latest box set, The Complete Kubrick. The 2160p/24 Hz presentation comes from the same 4K restoration Warner Bros. used for their 2020 UHD edition, sourced from a scan of the original 35mm camera negative. The set also includes a standard dual-layer Blu-ray with a 1080p presentation from the same restoration and all of the film’s special features.
Considering how terrific Warner’s 4K release looked, it came as no shock that Criterion’s presentation looks pretty great, too. The image is again very clean, with the restoration work having removed just about every trace of damage, while superb the encode renders the film’s very fine grain naturally. All around it has a wonderful photographic texture that Warner's previous Blu-rays had no hope in hell of ever achieving.
The film’s color palette is admittedly somewhat limited (lots of greens and browns), but the colors look quite good within that range. Black levels are fairly deep without eating up shadow detail, giving some of the darker sequences a nice sense of depth, with Dolby Vision boosting things, too, even if it's ultimately subtle. Nighttime scenes and dim interiors look really clean, even with all the smoke, dust, and debris during the climax in the city ruins. Highlights also look really good, from daylight coming through windows to the small glare coming off of the rim of a character's glasses, all without clipping details. Even flames feature a nice punch without looking overdone.
Criterion does make a couple of changes, though they’re less significant than what they did with The Shining. The framing has been corrected from Warner’s 1.78:1 to 1.85:1, and the color grading leans a little warmer. I thought it looked better and a little less video-like, though the difference is slight.
As for how the two presentations ultimately compare, I thought the smokier shots during the climax looked a wee bit cleaner on Criterion’s disc, but beyond that and the changes to the framing and grading, the two presentations look pretty similar. Which is fine by me. Warner’s presentation looked great, and so does this one.
The Complete Kubrick - Screen Captures
Audio 8/10
As with several other titles in the set, Criterion includes two audio options: the original single-channel mono soundtrack, presented in lossless PCM, and the remastered 5.1 surround mix, presented in DTS-HD MA.
The 5.1 presentation is still a rather good one, and I'm happy with it overall. Some gunshots, explosions, and even helicopter rotors are pushed out to the surrounds where appropriate, as does some of the film’s music. It is an effective mix, but most of the activity, including dialogue, remains up front.
The original mono soundtrack surprised me, though. I thought the dialogue sounded a bit sharper and had a little more range, and the action still comes through effectively, getting loud when it needs to. It's wholly focused to one channel, but it's surprisingly dynamic.
In the end, both tracks work well, sound very clean, and present no audible damage or distortion; it will ultimately come down to personal preference.
Extras 9/10
Criterion throws together a strong set of supplements for this title, porting everything over from Warner’s releases, starting with the 2007 audio commentary featuring critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks and actors Vincent D’Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, and Adam Baldwin, all recorded separately. This was my first time listening to the track, having never gotten around to it on the Warner editions, and I found it to be a really good track. Cocks brings a slightly more academic perspective to the proceedings, talking about the production and the film’s place among the Vietnam War movies of the period, particularly in relation to Apocalypse Now, which came out a few years before Kubrick started working on his film.
Ermey and Baldwin pop in here and there, with Baldwin first showing up when his character does, but much to my surprise, D’Onofrio turns up throughout, even after his character leaves the film. Ermey and Baldwin talk about how they came aboard and what went into their roles, with Ermey getting into drill instructor training and his work as a consultant. D’Onofrio recalls filming specific scenes and visiting the set, but he also gets into the working relationship he developed with Kubrick, who would let him know when he was happy with how things were turning out. It’s a surprisingly insightful track, far more so than I expect from most studio-produced commentaries of the era, and it’s edited and paced well enough that there’s rarely any dead air.
Also ported over is the 31-minute Between Good and Evil, an above-average studio-produced DVD featurette with interviews featuring Ermey, D’Onofrio, Baldwin, Cocks, Dorian Harewood, Jan Harlan, and others. It expands on some of the stories from the commentary, getting a little more into the film’s development and casting. It also covers the abandoned gasworks in London where Kubrick shot the film’s final section, feeling the architecture and rundown nature of it would make such a good stand-in for the ruins of Huế, after destroying and blowing up parts of it, of course.
Criterion also includes a selection of behind-the-scenes footage filmed by Vivian Kubrick and discovered in her father’s archives several years after his death, a topic also covered elsewhere on the disc. There’s some great material from the boot camp sequences and the more pyrotechnics-heavy scenes later in the film, and you get to see Kubrick using video playback to review what he’d just shot (other features throughout the set touch on how Kubrick would use videotape to get instant feedback and also make rough edits). Sadly, of the roughly 18 hours reportedly found, only nine minutes are included here. It's still a nice inclusion, though.
Criterion then includes The Marines, a 19-minute documentary filmed in 1957 on Parris Island, South Carolina, by François Reichenbach, who also made America as Seen by a Frenchman. It follows recruits through their training, from a drill instructor welcoming them after they’ve had their heads shaved to physical training, nightly checks, and even mail call. I don't recall the film being mentioned anywhere else and also couldn't find anything online suggesting Kubrick saw it. But watching it, there are moments that look as though they could have been lifted right out of the short and used as inspiration for the film. Whether Kubrick saw it or the similarities come down to his efforts in being as accurate as possible, the similarities can be almost eerie. The short comes from a newer high-definition restoration and looks quite good, too.
Following that is Mickey Mouse in Vietnam, an underground animated antiwar short directed by Whitney Lee Savage and designed and produced by Milton Glaser. Made without Disney’s blessing, it features the studio’s mascot enlisting and getting shipped off to Vietnam. I won’t spoil it, but I’m sure most will have a pretty good idea how things go.
And then we get to what may be the most interesting new inclusion, Jon Ronson’s 2008 documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes. As the title suggests, it’s about the thousands of boxes that filled Kubrick’s home, which contained material from most of his projects. Ronson first explains how came to find out about the archive and chronicles his journey to Kubrick’s home, spending five years sifting through those boxes before they were eventually moved to a climate-controlled archive open to visitors. He goes over what he found and there is a lot in there, from location photography and costume tests to random memos that make little sense to those who worked with him now. He even kept newspaper ads from around the world for his films, and wrote up notes on how some ads were being printed too small in some regions.
My favorite part, though (or one of them at least), may be the section on the "fan" and "hate" mail Kubrick received and kept, which he even went so far as to index by type and where it originated from. There was even a separate “crank” category for things he thought might come in handy as evidence if anyone ever made an attempt on his life. Ronson actually tracks down a couple of the people Kubrick filed under “cranks” and talks to them. One was a screenwriter going through a rough patch who basically lashed out at the director. The other sent Kubrick a video he considered a parody, which Kubrick took instead as a direct threat.
There’s a lot more, but I suspect the reason it’s tied to this film and not another (or relegated to the set's "bonus disc") is due to it appearing that there is a significant amount of the material specific to Full Metal Jacket, from the copious research and behind-the-scenes footage mentioned previously, to audition tapes. On this last point, actors sent in videotapes when word got out about Kubrick making the film, all in the hopes of landing a role, with Adam Baldwin and Arliss Howard among them. Most of the tapes were terrible, by the sounds of it, and we get a small sampling here. Leon Vitali recalls how he worked his way through these tapes over months and still remembers some of the wilder ones, a couple of which we get to see portions of. But the funniest detail may be that Kubrick would tape over the less impressive auditions with episodes of television shows, including Hill Street Blues.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting this to be that interesting. I figured it was here partly because it fit the theme of the set itself, which is designed to look like an archival box, but it ended up being one of my favorite new additions to the whole set. It's quite good.
The disc closes with a trailer, which appears to be a home-video trailer.
And there you have it. This disc is a little less stacked than some of the others in the set, but Criterion has thrown in some wonderful new material, and I quite enjoyed going through all of it.
Closing
Yet another terrific presentation from Criterion, with some wonderful new supplements to go with it.
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