Platoon (1986)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Oliver Stone

Writer:

Oliver Stone (written by)

Release Date:

24 December 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama | War

Tagline:

The first casualty of war is innocence.

Plot:

A young recruit in Vietnam faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.

Plot Keywords:

Vietnam | Soldier | Combat | Jungle | Village

Awards:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 18 wins & 9 nominations

Cast

Keith David	...	King
Forest Whitaker	...	Big Harold
Francesco Quinn	...	Rhah
Kevin Dillon	...	Bunny
John C. McGinley	...	Sgt. O'Neill
Reggie Johnson	...	Junior
Mark Moses	...	Lt. Wolfe
Corey Glover	...	Francis
Johnny Depp	...	Lerner
Chris Pedersen	...	Crawford
Bob Orwig	...	Gardner
Corkey Ford	...	Manny
David Neidorf	...	Tex
Tom Berenger	...	Sgt. Barnes
Willem Dafoe	...	Sgt. Elias

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English | Vietnamese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Germany:16 | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:R (Nova Scotia/Ontario) | Iceland:16 | Singapore:NC-16 (cut) | Australia:MA (Special Edition DVD) | Brazil:14 | India:A | Argentina:18 | Australia:M | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Chile:18 | Finland:K-16 | France:-12 | Hong Kong:IIB | Ireland:15 | Israel:PG | Japan:PG-12 | Netherlands:16 | New Zealand:M (DVD rating) | New Zealand:R (original rating) | Norway:18 | South Korea:15 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R (PCA #28241) | Vietnam:(Banned) | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Philippines

Company:

Hemdale Film

Trivia:

After Taylor (Charlie Sheen) takes his revenge on Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger), the other platoon arrives to look for survivors and someone asks Taylor if he's okay. As he does, Taylor quickly drops a grenade. The script didn't call for it, but Sheen thought his character would be suicidal at that point in the movie, and director Oliver Stone liked it and kept it in the movie.

Goofs:

Factual errors: In the attack on the camp, we see two NVA/VC soldiers acting as suicide bombers (one falls and explodes, the other makes it into the communication bunker before blowing up). In the script, these two men are identified as sappers. Sappers were specially trained combat engineers/reconnaissance commandos who used stealth to infiltrate a camp's defenses and take out strategic targets before the main attack; they were never used as suicide bombers, as they were too valuable.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Pvt. Gardner: [seeing body bags] Aw, man, is that what I think it is?
Sergeant: All right, you cheese-dicks, welcome to the 'nam! Follow me.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Kevin Smith: Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) (V)

Soundtrack:

WHITE RABBIT

One man goes to war and stares at its two contrasting faces

Platoon is an idealised crayon-sketch of Oliver Stone's Vietnam experience, with its fair dose of guns, bombs, blood, rain, jungle, evil murderous Asian faces and similarly evil murderous Americans. It lacks the gritty realism of Full Metal Jacket and shuns the hysterical philosophical nonsense in Apocalypse Now, instead telling its story and its ideas with action, atmosphere, characters and soundbites. Is it the best Vietnam War movie made to date? That title will always depend upon perspective and criteria, but Platoon comes close: it is well made, well written, craftily shot and cannily acted.

Green and inexperienced, Private Chris Taylor (Sheen) arrives in Vietnam, a volunteer rather than a conscript. At first he commits all the sins of a rookie: overloading his pack, making misjudgements and acting with zeal, although there is an obvious sense of his 'education' as we follow him through the film. He encounters two veteran sergeants: the brutal, battle-scarred, kill-em-all Barnes, and Elias, a dreamy pot-smoker with much more smarts, idealism and political nous. These men are obviously metaphors for those in Vietnam, those who are coordinating it from abroad, if not the whole conflict itself. The futility of a purely military solution to political problems and the wasteless murder of search-and-destroy missions are both obvious.

In terms of action, the archetypal Vietnam elements are all there: the jungle ambush, the village raid, the attack with rolling air support, and the set-piece battle against NVA regulars. These scenes will satisfy fans of hardcore war-porn, but they are not so overplayed, choreographed or downright gory that they will alienate the mainstream movie watcher. The viewer gets a very real sense of Vietnam as a 3-D war, with threats coming from all around you, not just the enemy in front. We leave Vietnam with Taylor at the end of his tour, and the whole thing is as untidy and unfair as it was when we arrived: the snivelling O'Neill (McGinley) survives because of his cowardice in battle, for example. In that respect it is a fairly unfulfilling story, though as a movie it succeeds on most levels.