Paris Island, South Carolina, U.S. Marine Corps Training Camp: late 1960s. A group of young Marine recruits, their heads shaven and their identities erased, are prepped for basic training to become Marines. They are subjected to the brutal Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey), whose orders are to "weed out all non-hackers." Hartman gives each of the Marines nicknames by their posture and response, naming one pragmatic recruit 'Joker' (Matthew Modine) for talking behind his back, another recruit is 'Cowboy' (Arliss Howard) for being from Texas, and a 6'3", 280-lb recruit, named Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), is nicknamed 'Gomer Pyle'.
