Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay he co-wrote with Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford. The film is based on Hasford's 1979 autobiographical novel The Short-Timers. It follows a pragmatic U.S. Marine who observes the dehumanizing effects of the Vietnam War on his fellow recruits, from brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue. The film explores the senseless, dehumanizing devastation of warfare.