Did I miss something here?

Rating: 1/10 (21 January 2000)

It's ridiculous to compare Platoon to Saving Private Ryan, and idiotic to say that the former is better than the latter. Nevertheless, I will compare the two, if only to counter some of the more ridiculous user comments written on this site.
Ryan has a far better-written script than Platoon. Its storyline isn't all over the place (Platoon seems to take its group of soldiers and put them into every single situation faced by Americans in the Vietnam war, which is okay in concept, but not done too well here). Ryan's has a path and moves smoothly and interestingly from one event to the next.

Next: The combat sequences. I consider myself open-minded, but I have to seriously doubt the intelligence of ANYONE who says that in this category, Platoon is better. It cannot possibly be--Platoon is simply too low-budget. The visual effects are unconvincing (don't tell me those explosions look real) and the sound (which won an Oscar!) ranges from tinny to annoying.

And what's up with the tiny platoon? When we get to a lot of the combat sequences, there are hardly any soldiers. It's like there's Barnes and a handful of American privates. For that matter, the problem of not enough soldiers (was this supposed to be a WAR, or what?) exists on BOTH sides. Ryan outmatches Platoon not only in terms of intensity but in terms of scope as well, showing fights between large groups of soldiers, which made it look... REAL. Platoon makes a false promise to put you in the war. I've seen street gangs with more members.
And to anyone who says, "Oliver Stone was there. He fought in Vietnam. He knows what he's showing," just please stop. STOP. All you know is hearsay. Just because someone served in the war doesn't mean they saw everything that happened in the war, now does it? I guess Oliver didn't know that the Vietnamese frequently strapped time bombs to their own children during this war, then sent them out to American soldiers, who were promptly blown up because they couldn't shoot a child.
Where am I going with this? Well, a lot of the things that happen in this movie make no sense, and a lot of people will think they know something and say Stone must be right--after all, he went through it. No one platoon could have seen all the events (combat and otherwise) that this one does. It was like Stone was putting the platoon through the whole war in a week. Stone didn't see everything that they did. Not by half. The result is that Stone is directing what he DOESN'T know, what he DIDN'T see, which is, in part, why a lot of the movie doesn't make sense. An objective viewer will look at this movie and see a whole bunch of parts that are just plain stupid. (And the cinematography's not that great, either)
In addition, I'm really put off by the fact that this movie makes monsters out of the Americans and heroes and martyrs out of the Vietnamese, showing only the atrocities committed on our part and none of theirs. Didn't we enter the war because the people portrayed as innocent townspeople (and badly camouflaged soldiers) invade South Vietnam to put the populace under dictatorial communist control? We came there to save them and WE'RE the bad guys? If Stone were making a truly objective film, he'd show what crimes the Viet Minh and Viet Cong committed against us. This movie isn't anti-war, it's anti-American.
On a positive note, the acting is great, the good cast masking the inadequacies of a thinly written script that brings forth every possible kind of conflict with the flimsiest of segues between them. And the music is truly beautiful, unlike the overall film. I do not lambaste it because it's disturbing (my favorite movies include Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan), but because it's unconvincing. Best Picture? I wouldn't give this Best Picture over anything short of the 1998 American Godzilla movie.