Platoon

So well before Charlie Sheen went absolutely batshit crazy, when he was just starting as an actor, one of his first big roles was Vietnam War movie, directed by Oliver Stone called Platoon.

I was really surprised how many well known actors are in this movie. And a lot of them had this as one of their first big movies, Sheen, Keith David, Forest Whitaker, Wilem Defoe, John McGinley from Scrubs, hell even Johnny Depp had a small part in this movie.

The story focuses on a platoon in Vietnam. The story is narrated mainly by Sheen's character, Chris Taylor, a new private who dropped out of college and volunteered to go to Vietnam because he believed that it was his duty to serve his country.

The platoon is led by a couple of sergeants (played by McGinley, Defoe, Tony Todd, and Tom Berenger) and a fresh Lieutenant named Wolfe (played by Mark Moses (Duck Phillips from Madmen)).

As the Platoon goes about their patrols and missions, they find themselves faced with the horrors of war and fall under the pressure of being in a war zone like Vietnam.

Now, this is an Oliver Stone movie. While i don't doubt that crazy shit went down in Vietnam, I also have no doubt that Oliver Stone exaggerated the hell out of this movie. A strength of the movie is that it puts the characters in a world that seemed so uncivilized that it pulls the worst out of these men. There are characters who seem like they're good people and then when faced with moral decisions, the worst is just pulled out of them.

The best example of this is when one of the members of the platoon is killed. They go to a village to find the people who killed their man.They try and get information from the civilians of the village but when they are not cooperative shit goes down.

Shit like killing unarmed civilians, pointing guns at children, and raping women.

The movie gives a fascinating look into the stresses of war and questions whether or not its that stress that makes someone make immoral decisions or if they're just evil to begin with.

Sergeant Barnes (played by Tom Berenger) is a great example of this. He's a sergeant that has been doing this fighting for a long time. He does things his way and will do whatever it takes to make sure he and the platoon survives.

His opposite is Sergeant Elias (played by Willem Defoe) who maintains his humanity pretty much throughout. He's in the moral right and there soon becomes a rivalry between those two, dividing the platoon.

Now obviously Stone was an incredible critic of the Vietnam War being as he made 3 movies about Vietnam. I think making a war drama can be done well if done with care, and while I do think Stone did a good job with Platoon, its just incredibly over the top criticism of Vietnam. Every time the main theme came out showing the atrocities of war I just had to sigh a little bit about the overthetopness of the movie.

You'll know the song when you hear it.

Is it a huge criticism? No. Oliver Stone can do all the criticism of Vietnam he wants, its just a tune I think we've all heard before. And retrospect is 20/20 so saying we shouldn't have gone to Vietnam isn't going to change the fact we did, and neither is exaggerating the demeanor of the troops that fought in that war. I won't go as far as to say its offensive, its just a caricature of how fighting in Vietnam was different than other wars the United States has fought in the past.

So what's my final verdict on Platoon?

It's good.

Is it exaggerated? Yes. Lots of scenes would never happen because the US Army is trained a little bit better than that but for dramatic effect it had to go down that way.

But for an 80's war movie, its pretty darn good. The cast is phenomenal and its fascinating seeing them so young and at the beginning of their careers. Sheen, Defoe, David, Depp, its hilarious seeing them in this movie and seeing them today and where they came from.

It also should be mentioned that the pop culture influence this movie has had since is insane. It makes me want to watch Tropic Thunder just to see the ways in which that movie is satirizing movies like this.