"There's the way it ought to be. And there's the way it is".

Rating: 9/10 (1 July 2011)

Oliver Stone's politics are no secret, but at the same time it would be difficult to characterize any film about the Viet Nam conflict as anything but anti-war. "Platoon" takes that idea and personalizes it in the battle of wills between two diametrically opposed warriors - Tom Berenger's sadistically ruthless Sergeant Barnes, and Willem Dafoe's humanistic Sergeant Elias. Charlie Sheen's character, Private Chris Taylor, serves as the viewer's moral arbiter between the two, attempting to make some sense of the untenable situation he finds himself in once he sets foot in the jungles of Viet Nam. We share his thoughts as he writes home to his grandmother, realizing that his noble ideals will be severely tested, while coming to an early conclusion that 'Hell is the impossibility of reason'.
For me, a picture like "Platoon" conveys the utter insanity that drives some men to do the kinds of things in war that would never even be considered in 'ordinary' life. The character of Bunny (Kevin Dillon) is a prime example. You have a young kid with little or no education, plucked from an ordinary and safe home environment, suddenly thrust into a situation of terrorizing foreigners at the point of a gun. Where does his kind of rage and brutality spring from? What makes Bunny so different from Chris Taylor, willing to waste a village while others shudder in horror at the mere thought? "Platoon" doesn't try to answer those kinds of questions, but boldly puts them out there for the viewer to consider.