Platoon (1986)

"Platoon" has Oliver Stone's creative name written all over it. His brash characters, deep message, and seemingly obsession with the Vietnam War is piled up into an epic war drama that thoroughly examines human nature. Charlie Sheen, while not a great actor, plays a wide-eyed soldier who wants to do good for his country and the world around him, who through his fellow soldiers sees the harsh realties of guerrilla warfare and the first-hand honors of the Vietnam War. In a monumental and iconic role, Willem DaFoe delivers his best work while Tom Berenger is stellar as the evil platoon leader. "Platoon" is a film with a clear message that's shown through its characters and scenarios in gritty detail and with shocking effect, making it one of the best films of the 80s and a war classic.

Film Review: "Platoon" (1986)When I recall my first of several each time differing experiences of watching "Platoon", when the first time had been somewhere in the mid-1990s on crappy television set, I had been hooked to this War-Action-Drama directed by Oliver Stone, whose film made such an immensely-intense impression on my emotional state of existence that the universal themes of Yin and Yang, Dark and Light impersonated by the ingeniously-written characters of Sgt. Elias and Sgt. Barnes, portrayed to career-defining proportions for supporting cast Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger respectively, who both had been honored with Academy-Award nominations for a motion picture history-making conflict of dealing with utmost stress situations in the middle of an inglorious "Vietnam War" ranging from 1965 to 1975, when chances were that the United States became front-running in a world-wide way of living for all people; which then just got shattered by infusions of enraged society of rich-kid students and returning crippled as emotionally-handicapped war veterans.Director Oliver Stone, who had made military service on his own in the war-time season 1967/1968 for the benchmarks-stretching U.S. American government under 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), had written the original screenplay on his experiences in "The Vietnam War" by implementing on main character Chris, performed by 21-year-old pitch-perfect-cast actor Charlie Sheen, who like no others had been able to portray the loss of innocence from the very first arrival at an SouthEast Asian airport in hazardous as blinding sand-corn-dust swirling in mid-air under a tear-draining piece of music by Samuel Barber visualized by the director's brother-in-arm cinematographer Robert Richardson, when they join forces to shot film-roll after film-roll on an remote jungle island within the splintered soils of the Philippines in spring/summer of 1986 to chaotic but highly creative scene coverage in favors for a beat-pushing director over producer's Arnold Kopelson's concerns on his six million dollar budget, which then in Fall 1986 becomes miraculously a knock-out of a picture to be present to critical as box office successes in this razor-sharp two-hour final-cut editorial by Claire Simpson to be recommended to anyone, who cares for the art-form of cinema and wants to learn more on the eternal human condition of fighting not each other but ourselves.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

The movie is about a young man (Chris Taylor), who in his efforts to find out his place in society, decides to enlist as a volunteer in the American army, during the Vietnam War. Chris, at the beginning, faces a lot of difficulties concerning his survival in such a cruel and harsh environment. While he is beginning to acclimatize, he has to deal with important ethical issues that come along with his more active involvement in the battles with the Vietnamese. Two men, Sergeant Gordon Elias and Sergeant Robert Barnes, are the two voices in Chris' head, just like the little angel and the little devil flying over our shoulders, that shape him and his moral code throughout his stay in Vietnam and stigmatize him for the rest of his life. Oliver Stone in a masterful manner in this movie, demonstrates the alienation, caused by such a bloody war, to those who wage it, whether they are high rank officials or just a private. The movie is a cry for the poor youth of his country, that was wrongfully wasted in this war, but also for the civilians, who are the ones who suffer the most by the hands of the two sides fighting this war. A very strong cast of actors, who all give their best selves to succeed in passing through the message the director was trying to send with this exceptional movie, but the point of interest, as far as acting is concerned, is Tom Berenger's powerful performance.

Probably the best Vietnam war movie I've ever seen. Most are too depressing to really enjoy and this one is depressing too but it works for me. It shows all the terrible side of this war even men turning on each other and probably the best character killed by someone in his own crew. It's raw and not uplifting but it's really well acted and I like it more than the others I've seen. Apocalypse Now is one of the other classics for this war and I really didn't like it at all. Willem Dafoe was great.