He set the template for cinema’s classic tough guy mentor

It was more than a decade and a half ago when I had my first brush with the force of nature that was R Lee Ermey. One of my cousins who was a major influence on me during the formative years of developing my appreciation for world cinema, had highly recommended FMJ. 

Knowing my penchant for war films right from my school days, I took the bait having been weaned on a steady diet of Oliver Stone’s Vietnam Trilogy (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth). Thanks to Samuel Barber’s adaptation of Adagio for Strings, Platoon became hardwired into my subconscious. 

But that was until FMJ (1987), which was then cited as ‘the’ definitive Vietnam War narrative, came along. The film, which starts off quite unassumingly turns into a whirlwind of bottled up rage in a matter of minutes as soon as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman charges into the barracks catching the young recruits unaware. 

What follows next is the stuff film history is made of. Hartman launches into a breathless, claustrophobia-inducing 15-minute long diatribe, unleashing a torrent of homophobic, racist and dehumanising expletives at the unsuspecting recruits, picking his victims randomly, one after the other. 

Employing humiliation as a weapon of choice, he strips his recruits to within an inch of their dignity, employing unprintable epithets to break their spirits and rebuild them as weapons of mass destruction. Of course, he saves his worst for Private ‘Gomer Pyle’, played by Vincent D’Onofrio. 

The transformation of young men into killing machines had never been showcased before with such chilling accuracy. Kubrick’s clinical vision and Ermey’s psychopathic rigour transforms the movie going experience into a numbing, visceral examination of humanity’s inherent need for bloodletting and the loss of innocence. 

Fast forward to three decades later, and audiences are treated to a film called Whiplash, which employs the formidable talents of JK Simmons, who plays a jazz instructor, whose calling card was flinging cymbals at our protagonist, an up and coming drummer played by Myles Teller, for messing up his notes. 

Sitting in the cinema during Oscar season in 2014, I remember being petrified by Simmons’ character, every time he came on screen. And it took me back to the time I watched FMJ and reminisced about how Ermey had unknowingly set the template and trope for every tough guy mentor with that one performance of his.