powerful but synthetic

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2001)

I think this is an important war-movie because the essential elements of the story are historically and personally important and because the many details (art-direction) are historically accurate. Apocalypse Now and Catch-22 (MY single favourite film of all time) are still ahead of Platoon by a long shot, because they portray the horrors and insanity of war in a much more human AND horrifying way, and don't concern themselves with supposed realism.
So, definitely not the best war-movie, but absolutely worth seeing/renting/buying. It is a movie about supposed experiences of one man and is actually a compilation (as many war-movies) of experiences of different people (mostly Stone's own though). The cinematography by Robert Richardson (Casino, Salvador) is great, but the acting ('method-directed' !) is not brilliant and the whole is made digestible and cliche; it has not become cliche after Platoon-wannabee-movies, but it was already cliche when it was released in 1986. Platoon feels synthetic, because it is too picturesque and the music drowns out the emotions and therefore destroys some of the realism, where the music in Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) poetically stresses the horrors and Catch-22 (Nichols, 1970) doesn't need music at all. Oliver Stone made it digestible when he wanted to show horrifying experiences. That's its (commercial) power and its weakness.
Platoon succeeded however, to reach a VERY large audience. That couldn't be said of the other two at time of release (don't count the IMDb votes: they don't represent box-office success). So every war-movie is effective in a way, if only for the director to free himself from terrible memories. Platoon is in that way perhaps similar to 'The Big Red One' (Fuller, 1980), which is from another perspective very off-beat. Platoon simply came a little bit too late. Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987) a little bit more. Not to speak of 'Born on the first of July' (1989).
But after all I'm the kind of guy who thinks Saving Private Ryan (1997) was a terrible waste of time, apart from Janusz Kaminski's (Schindler's List, A.I.) great contribution. Finally, 'Wild Palms' (1993, miniseries) is Stone's most interesting project so far, unfortunately not directed by himself.
9/10