Some plot please?

Rating: 2/10 (21 September 2006)

I read one other review that expressed the view that Platoon was a never ending cycle of marines killing people, being killed, taking drugs and talking trash.
I don't agree with that because the film actually had more to it, but it a way, I can see what this person is trying to say: this had no real plot - which is a point i agree with.
It is self-indulgent Stone at his best. He really wanted to show, not only how war leads to death, but also how it is extremely traumatic on those who survive. Unfortunately, the film seems to over "glorify" this aspect and the grand finale is just way too champagne, grand-standing, Oscar-hunting "let's create an enduring image" for my liking.
The problem I have with Stone and other film-makers of his ilk is that they fail to understand this simply concept: depicting the terribly bloody deadly waste that war is only says that war is bad - which is pretty self-evident, isn't it? World War 2 was horrible, incredible waste of human life, yet a necessary path to take in most people's opinion. It's clear Stone wants to say that the Vietnam war was wrong (which is fine) but argues this point by simply saying it was wrong because it was violent and traumatic. If you want to challenge the Vietnam war, make a film focusing on how it started rather that 100 minutes of people getting blown apart!
This says nothing of the fact that the ending or the final big "twist" was a bit stupid. However, this is not Stones first oddball departure. Wall street was a magnificent film, up until the last 30 minutes or so when it made a dreadful "wrong turn." JFK is probably one of the few films Stone did that actually ended very well.
But it hardly matters in this one because there was very little plot up until that point of the film to twist around. And this is why i gave it such a low mark. It was virtually story-less and ultimately boring - unless you fell for the manufactured poignancy.