SealedCargo — 1 year ago(February 22, 2025 08:01 PM)

he's only in the first act of…
had they had the original younger actor as the sergeant (who played the helicopter gunner), the movie… while not as classic… might have been more about the characters we then journey with into Vietnam for the next two very, very long acts…
I felt that once the sergeant and Pyle (Vincent D) were gone, the movie was left with characters who were mere bit players to who had been the main two characters, the bully sergeant and his picked-on victim… this is only an opinion but it's fact that they, not Modine or the others, were the central characters at boot camp (the section that harbored the most Kubrick-style shots)…
Kubrick fell a little bit too much in love with Ermy, who himself was much more realistic in The Boys in Company C, where we got to know THE BOYS before shipping off (and it's a far better movie) with them into Vietnam…
maybe make the boot camp section longer, and the Vietnam section shorter, and without the documentary-in-process stuff…
either way, this movie is overrated, sorry… (thank god for Adam Baldwin to steal the show at the last minute)…
The Fearmakers Blog
https://thefearmakers.blogspot.com/