A Great, Classic Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2006)

I thought that Platoon was a great classic movie by Oliver Stone. It starts off with Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) as a scared, college dropout who joined the army to get back at his parents, and try to make a statement about the system. After getting treated like dirt from all of the veterans for being the new guy, Taylor wants to go home or die. As he said "Its better to be killed during the first few weeks of war then drag out through the whole process."
When Taylor becomes part of his first ambush, he is not only grazed in the neck, but he is falsely accused of falling asleep on the job. Taylor thinks he is going to die, telling his platoon mates that it "everything seems so quiet when you die." Though Taylor was only grazed, he was so scared that he actually got shot, so he acted the way he did.
After spending three days in the medical center, he came back and some of the platoon mates welcomed Taylor with open arms: He was now part pf the platoon.
He joined Elias' (William Dafoe) group, which was more of the wild, party animal bunch. Taylor increasingly became more fearful for his death, and because of that started to act in ways he never thought he would do before. This was evident in the scene in the village raid where he shoots at a boy's foot to make him dance. He became overly frustrated with the boy, who would not listen to his instructions, and just snapped. After the incident, Taylor broke down and cried, realizing he did something horrible. It wasn't until the following scene that made Taylor a killing machine.
When Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) left Elias by himself, telling that the platoon was moving forward, when in fact the platoon was moving back that Taylor snapped. He thought something was fishy and went back to find Elias. He instead found Barnes, who said Elias was dead. Taylor reluctantly went back to the chopper, where he found Elias, shot and wounded, running with an enormous limp for about 50 Vietcong soldiers. Elias then did a Jesus like pose and fell dead on his face. Taylor knew right then that he had to kill Barnes by the end of his time at Vietnam.
In the final battle, Taylor was in the middle of a huge ambush that wiped out almost the entire U.S camp base. Taylor, seeing Barnes fighting for his life with another soldier, tried to help Barnes kill the Vietcong soldier. However, Barnes turned on Taylor and pointed a knife at his stomach, when all of a sudden a huge bomb goes off and everyone is knocked to the ground.
The next scene we see is the next morning, Taylor gets up and limps around in serious pain. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Barnes crawling on the ground. Barnes demands a medic, but quickly realizes that Taylor will not get one. Taylor points his gun at Barnes, which made Barnes say, "Common shoot me..." and with that Taylor shoots Barnes three times in the stomach. Taylor is then put in a helicopter to a medic, where he throws his hands up in the air in joy, but yet sadness because of Elias.
I thought Oliver Stone did an outstanding job of portraying Vietnam and what went on in the platoon. I have seen many biographies and documentaries in school about soldiers in Vietnam and everything that I have seen was dead on in this movie. Charlie Sheen nailed the part of Chris Taylor with a progression of scared, to angry, to not caring about his life with his reckless killing in the last scene. This role lead him to stardom with "Wall Street" and "Major League" to follow. William Dafoe also did a great job as always as playing Elias. Elias takes Taylor under his wing and is a man who is reckless in partying, but plays by the rules of war. Lastly, Berenger nailed the part of Barnes with his mean streak, and look that got him the part of playing the tough Bear Bryant years later. Berenger's scowl gave fear in everyones eyes, especially O'Neill's (John C. McGlincy).
This movie won best picture in 1986, but should also go down as one of the great war movies every made.