PLATOON Movie Review
1986 Oliver Stone
Though Oliver Stone has a well-deserved reputation as the enfant terrible of the left, his semi-autobiographical Vietnam film is more viscerally violent than any World War II propaganda. Stone does not present the conduct of the war in the flattering light of those “made with the full cooperation of the United States Army” productions, but his sympathies are with the men who fight, most of them anyway. He further distances himself from the political right by introducing the film with a epigraph from Ecclesiastes and then using Samuel Barber's elegiac “Adagio for Strings” throughout, instead of more conventionally martial music. Strip those away and what's left is one kick-ass war flick.
Though the fact is never explicitly stated on screen, the action is set before and during the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive of January 1968. A few months before it begins, college dropout and volunteer Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) joins Bravo Company, 25th Infantry. In sophomoric voice-over letters to his grandmother—not inappropriate for a character of his age in his situation, but embarrassing nonetheless—he describes his fears and his naive philosophical aspirations: “Maybe I've finally found it, way down here in the mud. Maybe from down here I can start up again, be something I can be proud of without having to fake it—be a fake human being. Maybe I can see something I don't yet see or learn something I don't yet know.”
The first thing he learns is that going out on patrol at night is terribly frightening. He's thrown into a situation where his training is useless. If he doesn't figure it out on the job, he'll die. His guardian angel is Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). The platoon's senior sergeant, Barnes (Tom Berenger), is a cold-blooded racist killer who loves the war. The differences between the two men are drawn in bold, unambiguous strokes. The beatific Elias hangs out with the “heads,” who have a poster of Ho Chi Minh on the wall, smoke dope, and listen to Motown. Scarfaced Barnes is a “juicer,” with a Confederate flag, Jack Daniels whiskey, and Merle Haggard on the stereo. Though Chris pretends briefly to be torn between the two father figures, the matter is quickly settled when they're out on patrol away from their base.
That central section, involving the discovery of a tunnel system and a nearby village that may be a Vietcong supply base, is the most tense and frightening part of the film. The mission goes so badly that by the time the Americans enter the village, they're a group of frightened kids who are ready to kill without reason. The sequence reaches a conclusion so gut-wrenching and horrifying that Stone backs away from the realities of Vietnam and settles into the traditional patterns of war movies. By changing a few details, the big attack scenes in the third act could have come from Battleground, A Walk in the Sun, or Battle of the Bulge.
Because the dramatic tension is pitched so high almost from the first frames, the acting is overstated. Dafoe and Berenger, both nominated for Best Supporting Actor, are particularly fierce. Of the grunts, Kevin Dillon as Bunny, the cheerful psycho who understands that he is in his element, makes the most lasting impression. When Stone is not filling the screen with explosions, he is able to make the jungle seem all too real, a wet place meant for bugs, leeches, and snakes, not for people. At his worst, Stone turns to facile visual sloganeering—notice, for example, the appearance of a Nazi flag toward the end—and the conveniently contrived ending. In the end, though, the flaws are less important than the powerful images of violence and madness that Stone forges. On repeated viewings, Platoon loses some of its raw energy, but it's still a significant addition to the American war film.
Cast: Charlie Sheen (Chris Taylor), Willem Dafoe (Sgt. Elias), Tom Berenger (Sgt. Barnes), Francesco Quinn (Rhah), Forest Whitaker (Big Harold), John C. McGinley (Sgt. O'Neill), Kevin Dillon (Bunny), Richard Edson (Sal), Reggie Johnson (Junior), Keith David (King), Johnny Depp (Lerner), Dale Dye (Capt. Harris), Mark Moses (Lt. Wolfe), Chris Pederson (Crawford), David Neidorf (Tex), Tony Todd (Warren), Ivan Kane (Tony), Paul Sanchez (Doc), Corey Glover (Francis); Cameo(s): Oliver Stone; Written by: Oliver Stone; Cinematography by: Robert Richardson; Music by: Georges Delerue; Technical Advisor: Dale Dye. Producer: Arnold Kopelson, Hemdale Films. Awards: Academy Awards ‘86: Best Director (Stone), Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Sound; British Academy Awards ‘87: Best Director (Stone); Directors Guild of America Awards ‘86: Best Director (Stone); Golden Globe Awards ‘87: Best Director (Stone), Best Film—Drama, Best Supporting Actor (Berenger); Independent Spirit Awards ‘87: Best Cinematography, Best Director (Stone), Best Film, Best Screenplay; American Film Institute (AFI) ‘98: Top 100; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘86: Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Berenger, Dafoe). Budget: 6M. Boxoffice: 137.9M. MPAA Rating: R. Running Time: 113 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Closed Caption.