revisiting the film, six months after its premiere

Rating: 5/10 (27 December 2010)

When I first saw 'Platoon' in December of 1986 (less than a week after it opened) my reaction was more or less typical, and likely swayed by popular opinion at the time...
No politics, no apologies: just a blood and guts version of the Vietnam War as seen from a soldier's point of view, written and directed by one who was there. Oliver Stone's previous writing credits ('Midnight Express', 'Scarface', 'Year of the Dragon') showed an almost obsessive inclination toward melodramatic bloodletting, but here at least he found the perfect vehicle for his sweaty daydreams. The film is a soldier's act of public catharsis: a dramatized but painfully vivid account of one young grunt's transfiguration from eager, innocent recruit to brutalized, savage veteran, driven by his horror, fear, and fatigue into acts of violence against both his enemies and his comrades.
Some of the details may be exaggerated out of all proportion (Tom Berenger's cruelly scared face; the stately Barber adagio on the soundtrack), but the overall effect works not unlike a swift blow to the stomach: not exactly an enjoyable experience, but the pain is hard to forget.
Six months later, after seeing the film a second time (it was still screening at first-run theaters in San Francisco), my response was more circumspect...after all the Oscars were awarded and all the hype and hysteria quieted down, it became easier to appreciate Oliver Stone's career making war movie for what it really was: not the best film made of the Vietnam experience, but certainly the most timely and accessible.
There's no doubting the necessity or sincerity of Stone's vision. Or the grim accuracy of his details (drawn no doubt from his own memories of combat). But as a filmmaker he is, at best, more a skilled craftsman than an artist, and his claustrophobic grunt's-eye view of the war can't help but suffer from a foot soldier's single-minded lack of imagination, simplifying complex moral dilemmas into obvious and easy personifications of good versus evil: saintly Willem Dafoe vs. battle-scarred Tom Berenger.
The only way Stone can think to take up the narrative slack is with unnecessary voice-over narration (letters to grandma, no less), usually a last-ditch tactic designed to camouflage a film's inability to communicate in its own language. The same can be said for the biblical epigraph (from Ecclesiastes) and, to a lesser degree, the stately Barber adagio, both of which substitute false piety for the very real emotional drama already in evidence.
Further proof, if any were needed, that first impressions are rarely complete.