The only surprise about this average Vietnam war film is that it took Stanley Kubrick more than a year to make. The story falls into two sections, both familiar staples of military films. The training (in this case particularly hard) of a group of Marine recruits and the combat action, in a slightly stylised and sanitised Vietnam, which, as befits the English locations, seems devoid of jungle, but full of glowing skies and shattered villages and towns. The feeling of these scenes is faintly unreal. More realistic, indeed the best thing about the film, is the drill sergeant. But as the actor, Lee Ermey, is an ex-drill NCO himself, his dialogue is presumably ripped from experience in all its crude but often amusing colour. Of course there's a closing homily on what it all means, but even Platoon had that; the Americans, it seems, can't resist trying to make sense out of the whole messy business.

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