Lee Ermey, the real-life drill instructor who played the same in Full Metal Jacket, Swofford offered a remembrance in the New York Times with the headline “ Full Metal Jacket Seduced My Generation and Sent Us to War.”) In Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir Jarhead, Swofford recalls joining fellow recruits in getting pumped up while watching Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, two of the most famous films about the horrors of war. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” The evidence often bears him out. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar film. Asked why there’s little killing in his films, Truffaut replied, “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. Speaking to Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune in 1973, François Truffaut made an observation that’s cast a shadow over war movies ever since, even those seemingly opposed to war. It has been updated with the addition of Napoleon and other movies. This article was originally published in 2020. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Courtesy of the Studios