Written by Oliver Stone
Directed by Oliver Stone
It’s hard to merge the image of writer and director Oliver Stone with the fact that he was once a soldier. He actually dropped out of Yale University to go to Vietnam, while many others were looking to college as a means to escape the draft. This bit of his biography eludes many of those who wish to marginalize him as a “lefty” and dismiss any chance he has at being seen as a director with credibility.
After writing numerous other screenplays, he stepped into the Director’s chair with Platoon in 1986. The screenplay was based on his experiences in Vietnam. The characters themselves were based on composites from people Stone knew when he served over there.
Charlie Sheen portrays Chris Taylor. Chris is from an upper-middle-class background who actually volunteered to go to Vietnam at a time when others were trying to find any excuse to stay away. He steps off the plane in 1967 into the alien world of Vietnam. Chris is clean-cut and good-looking. That’s contrasted with the soldiers heading toward the plane who look dragged out and scrawny.
Chris is a kid who is more well-off than the others in his platoon. He left college and a good future to serve in the infantry. The atrocities he sees are what shape him. More than anything else, though, it is the division in the platoon that causes the most conflict. Although not apparent at first, it’s divided between the two sergeants. Sgt. Elias (portrayed by Willem Dafoe) is the more laid-back of the two. He is there to do his job to the best of his ability, but he also wants to get him and his men through this as intact as possible. The group of soldiers that gravitated to him is marked by their use of recreational drugs as well as the rock music they listen to. Sgt. Barnes (portrayed by Tom Berenger) is more hot-headed and reactionary. He’s a killing machine who enjoys cutting people down and doesn’t try to avoid conflicts and controversy. His group spends their time together playing cards and listening to country music.
It would be easy to see these two factions as a prelude to what divides this country today. The group Sgt. Barnes cultivates seems to be more of the flag-waving conservatives who are prone to the jingoisms such as “my country, love it or leave it” while Sgt. Elias’ men seem to be the type that were drafted and didn’t like it, but are trying just to survive to the end. They are the ones who will come back and recount the horrors they have seen and join in the protests mounting back home.
Chris finds himself caught between the two men. Barnes seems to inspire loyalty more, and his aggressive nature seems more enticing than the cautious nature with which Elias goes about carrying out his orders. As the film progresses, the division between the two men escalates. Chris’ observations are hinted at with voiceovers reading letters he’s sending to his grandmother back home. As I viewed the movie, I could easily see the between-the-lines hints contained in the letters, although they have the tone of reassurance for the serenity of the people back home.
The acting is terrific all the way around. Sheen doesn’t come off as wide-eyed and innocent, but he is definitely unprepared for the reality of what he’s facing. Too often it’s easy to portray a character like this as completely naive. I never got that impression with Chris. Rather. He seemed to be an idealist who is having all of the truths he grew up with being ripped to shreds. He is learning his country isn’t infallible, nor is war the noble, glamorous cause people often make it out to be.
DaFoe has become one of my favorite actors even before I first saw Platoon. His character is perhaps the most complicated. He is a good soldier, and he doesn’t shirk his duty, but he has no illusions about what he is doing. He has the most foresight of all the soldiers, and his prediction that what happens in the village is the reason the war won’t be won was probably the one lesson we could still learn from but aren’t. This was in line with what I felt while watching this. All I could think was if history was repeating itself in Iraq, it’s no wonder we weren’t received with flowers and chocolates.
Both Dafoe and Berenger are excellent and are the real stars of the movie, rather than Sheen. Although the events are seen through his eyes and his interpretation, it is DaFoe and Berenger who represent the way the senselessness of the mission is tearing the soldiers apart from within.
The imagery is beautiful and deadly. Filmed in the Philippines, the look is as close as possible. It has the feeling of a paradise that is drowning in blood. Stone’s camera angles and setting is terrific all the way through, and the sequence leading up to his most memorable shot of DaFoe is paced absolutely perfectly. He paces the film well, too, although the down times seem to plod, I felt like I knew something was coming and waited for it with an anxious heart.
The DVD contains a number of special features, including some very good commentary by Oliver Stone. There’s also a documentary on making Platoon, but more could have been done. This just wasn’t a time when Hollywood was big on having actors and crew talk about making a film, other than promotional items for cable television channels.
With so many films made about the war in Viet Nam, it’s hard to pick the ones that stand out above the others. One of those definitely is Platoon. Whether it’s because of Stone’s first-hand experience or simply the quality of the acting and overall production could be debated, but doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that this is a great film, if sobering, about our military presence there and since then.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
” Audio Commentary with Oliver Stone
” Audio Commentary with Captain Dale Dye
” “Tour of the Inferno” Documentary
” Original Theatrical Trailer
” TV Spots
” “Behind the Scenes” Photo Gallery
” Poster Art
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Categories: Movie Reviews
There is, sadly, a through-line that connects the Vietnam War and its effects on American society and today’s MAGA phenomenon. It’s not an illusion, nor is it a fiction created by either the right or left. As one of the veterans interviewed by Ken Burns’ crew for his masterful 2017 documentary “The Vietnam War,” that misbegotten conflict WAS the spike driven into the nation’s heart and caused a grievous wound that has not healed, even though Vietnam is 50 years in our national rear-view mirror.
As for Oliver Stone’s ultra-leftist leanings: I can admire Platoon as an honest account of Vietnam and Stone’s participation in it (the Sheen character is, of course, a fictional version of the writer-director). I don’t think any rational human being (American or not) would deny that Stone served his country honorably as a young man, nor do I think he should be “marginalized.”
I do think, however, that he IS too chummy with the current regime in Venezuela; I have one relative who lives/lived in that country, and she said that the corruption, cronyism, and authoritarianism of the Chavez/Maduro regime ruined Venezuela and its society. I don’t know if Stone has moderated his views about Nicolas Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s successor, but I do know that when Chavez was alive, he was one of the strongman’s American cheerleaders. Some Vietnam vets, Stone among them, were (rightfully) angry and resentful about our country’s role in a war that was never ours to begin with. However, this has blinded him to the excesses of Marxist dictators along the lines of the late Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Stone is a fine filmmaker, and if he makes a movie that I might want to see, I’ll watch it. But I don’t buy his political stances (except, perhaps, for his disdain of America’s far right, which I share), as well as his penchant for conspiracy theories, especially about JFK.
Re Platoon: I reviewed the movie when it was in its pre-Oscars wide release for my college campus’ student paper; that’s the review I’ve shared online since….forever. It’s one of my favorite films, though (like Schindler’s List) I watch it sparingly.
It’s not an easy film to watch. But war is hell, and the innocent often suffer in it. I was just listening to an audiobook about the end of the second World War where Soviet soldiers in Germany were encouraged to rape the civilian women they came into contact with. I think that and Stone’s work here is more about the mentality that comes about when soldiers are in a war. Much of their humanity seems to get tossed out the window.
Consider what young men (and now, young women) are trained to do when they are either conscripted or volunteer for military service: to obey orders and kill other human beings. That this is necessary for the defense of one’s country is a fact I long ago came to terms with, but it’s an ugly fact nonetheless. Wars – even “just wars” such as Operation Desert Storm in our lifetime and WWII and even Korea in our parents’ generation – bring out both the best and the worst in people, and those like Vietnam, where the GIs and Marines on the ground never knew who was their friend or their foe in Southeast Asia, just exacerbate the problem.
I will also submit to you my feeling that much of the racism in the South aimed at blacks isn’t just about “white supremacy” or ignorance, but it’s also resentment by Southerners that THEY lost a war to keep slavery legal…even though they claim otherwise. Wars leave psychic wounds in the countries that fight them, wounds that, like that vet in Burns’ documentary said, take a long time to heal.
I remember this movie. It wasn’t a happy one but a good movie. You wrote a great review.
Thank you Thomas!