Typical Stone

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2001)

Perhaps one of the most over rated yet necessary films made. Typical of Oliver Stone, the imagery is wooden and the characters stereotypical. Yet in spite of the crassness of his eye, the movie tells the story of Vietnam in a manner that communicates the complexities of the war to average movie goers. If we juxtapose Stone's handling of the Mi Lai massacre with Coppola's metaphorical scene of the slaughter of innocents by the boat crew in Apocalypse Now, you see the difference between the art film making and the "art" of self righteous cinematic flotsam. Yet on a real level, Platoon was released during the heat of Reganism and the nationalist chest pounding that went along with it. Society was swallowing the palled justifications for world wide police actions easier than trickle down economic theory. In this vein, this hyperbolic reminder of the last great feat of American nationalism run amok was well timed. Unfortunately, this film gave Stone the credibility with which he bashed us with such gems as "Wall street", "Born on the Fourth of July", and the seminal example of the girth of his ego, "JFK". However, this is a small price to pay if he presented the dangers of being a myopic super power to a polity that had just re-elected an actor as President.