Two and a Half Men

Rating: Null/10 (7 May 2010)

When "Platoon" premiered, Time Magazine ran a cover spread with the title "Vietnam as it really was". Other pundits applauded director Oliver Stone for his "truthful account of the Vietnam War". Of course, these songs of praise largely occurred in America. Elsewhere in the world, such films were viewed as just more tedious propaganda, which served only to further rob entire generations of a right to factual information and further mythologise a deliberately obfuscated war.
But what's worse is the way these films purport to be "anti-war", but then treat war as a coming-of-age ritual, a rights of passage into manhood in which our heroes endure exciting action sequences and then, at least in "Platoon's" case, benefit from these experiences (as explained in "Platoon's" excruciating final voice-over).
These films covertly endorse war, serving up tales of a rag-tag bunch of racially diverse guys who "don't know what they're fighting for" but are nevertheless "willing to die for their brothers". Elsewhere the "horrors" which these soldiers commit are simply dismissed as acts of temporary insanity, rather than systemic atrocities ordered from above. Worse still is the way these films tend to treat Vietnam as a lost war, but a noble one, America simply guilty of being overly generous to a point of naivety, the Vietnamese population – portrayed as primal and barbaric - ultimately to blame for the pain inflicted upon the American psyche.
The historical truth, of course, is the opposite: the US sided with French Imperialism before the war, was neither supported by Northern Vietnam or the South, did everything it could to scuttle elections and unification, disobeyed Geneva mandates, propped up puppet dictators, artificially and deliberately divided a nation, killed over 4 million Vietnamese, raped the country, engaged in large scale torture, bombing, war-crimes and detainments, faked terrorist acts, funded and armed warlords, forced the displacement of five million, and violently subverted the will of a 80 percent majority who wanted democratic communism. But that's how the US, in tandem with the Imperial powers of yesteryear, habitually operates: vote for who we don't want and we crush you.
The truth is, most films touted as being "Vietnam war films", aren't really about the Vietnam War; they're simply about confused and anguished Americans. "Platoon", like "First Blood", presented itself as an attempt to reconcile Americans with what had happened in Vietnam. But unlike "First Blood", which brought Vietnam back home and forced Americans to confront the scars, "Platoon" yanks us back to Asia and invites us to experience the everyday "truths" of how soldiers experienced the war, the film designed to heal the wounds of a "great nation" undeservedly "defeated" at the hands of a poverty-stricken third world country (the notion that America was "defeated" is itself mythology. America achieved its real goals in Vietnam, in much the same way it did in Iraq, another supposedly "failed war").
So at its core, "Platoon" is a fairly straightforward morality play. Chris, played by Charlie Sheen, is a young soldier who must (like his character in Stone's "Wall Street") choose between two fathers. The first father is Sgt Elias, a tough but gentle sergeant, and the second is Sgt Barnes, an evil brute. Elias represents the mud-stained American ideal, whilst Barnes represents a kind of corrupt devil who believes that men of principle are weak and that evil is within everyone.
The film ends with two successive apocalypses. In the first, Elias is abandoned and dies like Christ, a horde of Vietcong devils engulfing him whilst Chris betrays him and angelically rise up into the skies. But this is a false resurrection. The last good man – the moral heart of America – has been left behind to die on the cross, leaving Chris alone with Barnes, a kind of demonic God.
To salvage his soul, Chris must thus venture back into the jungle-hell, avenge Elias and kill Barnes, an incident which takes place in the film's final apocalypse. Here, amongst the devilish shadows of the Vietcong, Chris confronts Elias and kills him, before being once again lifted up into the skies. In Stone's mythology, America is neither fighting Vietnam nor defeated by it. Rather, America is struggling to confront and dispatch its own demons, that of collective memory and national guilt. She then re-learns how to be a good warrior nation.
The devil sergeant destroyed and the Christ hero avenged, Chris(t) frees America and is then lifted off into the sunset like a body resurrected into some easier, more comfortable tomorrow. "I have felt like the child of these two fathers," Chris then says. "We did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves, and the enemy was within us. Those of us who made it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and meaning to this life."
And so "Platoon" dissolves defeat and serves up a cathartic experience in which memory is erased and the American dream persists. Elsewhere the film is resolutely goofy, with Barber's "Adagio for Strings" overused (cribbed from "Elephant Man"), too much romanticised insanity, goofy poetry, high-school symbolism and the kind of macho posturing that now seems silly post "Tropic Thunder", "Hot Shots" and "Full Metal Jacket's" self-aware caricatures. Furthermore, Stone throws in every cliché (the village trial, the racist, the southern soldiers, the ineffective officer who almost always gets their men killed, the dope smoking, the war-as-being-high aesthetic etc) known to man. He'd direct the superior "Born on the Fourth of July" some years later.
6/10 – An ingratiating film, rewarding in a very superficial way. See "The Quiet American", "Walker", Pontecorvo's "Burn" and "Go Tell the Spartans".