Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Jump ahead to 1987 to close the war films while Paths of Glory is still fresh. The first half, at a Marine boot camp, is the stretch everyone remembers, built around a ferocious drill instructor and a recruit coming apart; the second follows the same men into the street fighting in Hue. Both halves were shot in England, the training camp at Bassingbourn Barracks in Cambridgeshire and the ruined city in the abandoned gasworks at Beckton in east London, which says a lot about how completely Kubrick could build a world without leaving home. If the second half feels looser, that break in rhythm is part of the design.