Platoon

Rating: 8/10 (11 April 2007)

The way how Oliver Stone describes the soldiers in his Oscar-winning Vietnam film "Platoon" is similar to what we've already seen in "Apocalypse Now" for example. He shows us a bunch of mainly poor people, a drug taking behaviour beyond the border of the acceptable and military leaders that are anything else than exemplary. But this film wants much more to be a vivid documentation of reality. Stone wants us to feel the deadly insects on our own skins, he wants us to feel the heat, he wants us to feel the fear, what it must be like to sit in the middle of an unknown jungle knowing that the enemy is going to attack any second. He wants all of this, so that the viewer can at least get a glimpse why the soldiers are carrying out this horrible massacre. He doesn't want to apologize it, but give us a psychological insight. Until the massacre the film is extraordinary good, after that I had a bit of a problem with the extreme black/white characterization of Elias and Barnes.