SGTS HARTMAN & TOOMEY

Two sergeants, two movies, two different wars.

Parallels between both representations of military patriarchs ('father surrogates') in the two films I'm about to contrast though are fascinating and only a year separates their year of release to the general public.

In Stanley Kubrick's 1987 movie, 'Full Metal Jacket', Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) is determined to break his men down at any cost to turn them into pure, cold-hearted killers. Stripped of their humanity and individuality, he irons out any flaws that he senses they still might possess like a tracking hound.

Once they're stripped of their basic sense of separateness, he can then sign off on his successful establishing of a battalion as a single collective organism. Or in other words, a murder machine for the American military.

Sergeant Toomey: "In the past twenty-one days, you boys have made some fine progress. You're not fighting soldiers yet, but I'd match you up against some Nazi cocktail waitress anytime."

In Mike Nichol's 1988 movie 'Biloxi Blues' based on Neil Simon's stageplay of the same name, Sergeant Toomey (Christopher Walken) is similarly unforgiving and merciless in many instances as drill instructor but whereas the humour between Hartman and his men is only directed one way, there are far many more opportunities for repartee between Toomey and the men he trains, more give and take. There is not just a literal crack in Toomey's head (protected by a steel plate), but we also sense his heart as demonstrated toward the end of the film when he has a drunken breakdown on his last night overseeing basic training as the Sergeant shows that he too can be similarly human just like Jerome and Epstein, his two most cerebral and unlikely recruits.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: "The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle. It is your killer instinct which must be harnessed if you expect to survive in combat. Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills. If your killer instincts are not clean and strong you will hesitate at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead marines and then you will be in a world of shit because marines are not allowed to die without permission. Do you maggots understand?"

Private Joker (Matthew Modine) from Kubrick's 1987 war movie might also have fitted well into the camaraderie of the Biloxi barracks but he was born at a different time and is sent to train for a war a generation later - Vietnam. He, like Epstein in Biloxi makes the mistake of cracking a joke while his Sergeant is in full monologue mode and draws out the poisonous rage inside his drill instructor who then demonstrates the lengths he'll go to punish the men in the room.

Both Hartman and Toomey are sadistic at times with their methods of correction but one is borderline psychopathic in his meting out of punishment whereas the other is just firm.

Perhaps this dehumanization found in 'Full Metal Jacket' was a reflection of an increasingly depersonalized military with a country committing to deeply confused foreign policy (Vietnam) whereas in 'Biloxi Blues' there's still some sense of humanity between the sergeants and their soldiers even when engaged in the inhuman if slightly more logically motivated Korean war.

One thing is for certain, both Ermey and Walken deliver two of the most entertaining Sargents on film and the comparison between the two different yet similar movies makes for a fascinating double-bill in what they tell us about human beings under pressure at times of war.

Right, now where's my jelly doughnut?!