DVD REVIEW: MAIL CALL S.N.A.F.U.

The Pitch

It’s a crazy man with a foul mouth and a gun! And a knife! And a .30 Cal. Machine gun…and a crossbow and a tank and a dueling pistol and a…

The Humans

R. Lee Ermey

The Nutshell

Ronald Lee Ermey: a consummate professional. Whether it’s getting Pvt. Pyle to choke himself in Full Metal Jacket or putting Saran Wrap over a hapless victim’s face in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, he does it with complete gusto. One hundred-and-ten percent, if you will. But even ol’ Gunny sometimes gets a little too wound up and forgets his lines, and when he does your in for some laughs…in theory.

As retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey explains it S.N.A.F.U. stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up and The History Channel finally came up with enough S.N.A.F.U. moments to fill fifty-three minutes and throw it on a DVD for our enjoyment.

Watching anyone stumble and bumble can be humorous, and when its angry Ermey it definitely has its moments, but hearing a retired military man utter the word “Fuck!” repeatedly for twenty minutes did indeed wear on me a little bit. Fortunately the warmhearted whispers of R. Lee are intercut with misfiring weaponry that blow up in Ermey’s face and little children throwing up on our favorite drill instructor’s shoes.

The real fun of this DVD is in sitting back and watching a crazy person attack various melons with an amazing array of firepower. He stabs watermelons with a knife, shoots them with handguns and civil war rifles, and even launches them from a catapult. The whole time he has the wildest look on his face while he offers up the confession “I hate watermelons!” I can’t help but wonder if it was the same look on his face and the same sentence with one word replaced (you guess which one) when he was doing his job in Vietnam. I really shouldn’t be bothering to even ponder that question.

So yeah, he still calls Japanese “The Japs!” and he has a bloodthirsty look in his eyes whenever he fires off a few rounds into a fruit, but he’s like that veteran grandfather that always talks a bit crazy when ya get him going on the military, and sometimes he offers up a few laughs when he’s out in the backyard with a .50 cal.

I suppose you just can’t fault a guy for doing what he loves and in Ermey’s case that thing is blowin’ up melons! And occasionally playing with his dolls, but that is a whole different tangent that I am not going to spend any time on here.

The Package

No extras here, but you do get the option of watching the “Family Friendly” version with all the obscenities bleeped or you can opt for concentrated Ermey with the “Xtra Salty” version.