How does this compare to other recruit movies?

I think it was pretty sad.

I happened to be in basic training at Fort Bliss (1953) DOG COMPANY, 7TH INFANTRY TRAINING DIVISION about the time they were wrapping up filming. In fact one of my commanding officers has a speaking part in the film..."BY THE BOOK RYAN, BY THE BOOK!"

They didn't even come close to what the training really was! Everything was rather silly...I wish it had been that easy...
no, i'll take that back..we were being trained for combat in Korea, i'm glad they they didn't fool around!

I love Kubrick but i thought he did a silly film, also. I think he bought himself an encyclopedia of military slang and then used every one of them during the course of the film. It got very old and embarrassing after a few minutes.

biff

Conscription in the United States ended at the end of the Great War, of course. It began again in October 1940, more than a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The WW2 draft lasted through 1947, but no inductees were ordered to report in 1947.

A new, "cold war" draft began in 1948 and we still operate under the same law. The last year that we took new inductees was in 1974, but the law has stayed in place.

I noted on a reply to the other poster that "The D.I.," released in 1957 has been praised as highly accurate for USMC training of the period in which it was made. I don't know any recent movies that reflect current training. The army, navy, marine corps, and air force each have different training philosophies, goals, and hence programs. So, no one movie is going to demonstrate all of them.


The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

Nearly none of the boot camp/basic training movies made to date has been realistic, because almost all of them have omitted any hint of the physical abuse inflicted on the recruits/inductees. During the first few weeks of training in the Vietnam era, trainees were routinely pushed, struck, overly-exhausted and sleep/hydration-deprived by the training cadre in ways that are not tolerated today. In the first few days, especially, a few targeted trainees (much like "Pyle" in Full Metal Jacket) were rather severely beat up - both as punishment, and to intimidate the other trainees. (As in FMJ, it eased off after the first few weeks of training.)

Full Metal Jacket has been the most realistic training-phase military movie in this regard, although it went way off the deep end with poetic license silliness like memorized group chants and prayers, such as the memorized "This is my rifle!" bedtime, prone-in-the-bunks schtick; the overly-rehearsed "This is my rifle, this is my gun" close-order drill; and Hartman's over-the-top, in-your-face, comic lines shouted into the face of each and every recruit in the barracks on the first day. Utter nonsense.

But, if you can put aside the poetic license goofiness, Full Metal Jacket pretty much nailed the training portion of the military experience, as no other movie has.