Oliver Stone's masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (4 November 1998)

"Platoon" took character-building to a level unrivaled by any movie I have yet seen. Stone also payed careful attention to details,that were pertinent to the experiences of combat life in Vietnam(even easy to overlook details, like the fire ants, snakes,the tropical storms,impenetrable jungle foliage, the fatigue of the soldiers,and many elements which heighten the sense of the agony). Only someone with a first-hand combat experience could have pulled it all off so convincingly. No movie to date has so closely depicted war in such a realistic and penetrating manner(except for,perhaps, the opening forty minutes of "Private Ryan").I was shocked that it wasn't listed among the top ten IMDb ranked movies.