Necessary as opposed to gratuitous.

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2006)

When I first saw this, I felt pretty disappointed in how a sense of the glory of war still seemed to have slipped its way into the mix through the character of Elias, played by Willem Dafoe. Somehow Dafoe's moralistic inner-strength and the way he can run into combat to kick butt without any support because, "Other people just slow me down," seemed incongruous with the overarching point of intensifying the destructive feelings of fear, stress, and anger felt during combat.
However, regarding Elias as a symbol of what the innocent people like Chris wanted to believe came out of war helps to reinforce the theme stated at the end of the movie: "We are in war against ourselves and our enemies are really within us." Sergeant Barnes' (Berenger) hidden execution of Elias shows the ultimate destruction of that romantic heroism from within rather than without.
It is from that point that the high levels of violence, bodies ripping apart, disturbing fights, and harrowing warfare surrounds itself to become more than just voyeuristic appraisal of the Vietnam War. Much has been said about Oliver Stone's involvement in the war and how this movie was created of his experiences, but I think it's important to point out that Stone's writing and directing is strong enough that his reputation as a veteran is not the only excuse for the disturbing and disgusting images of a film that has upon second-thought no inspection, but contains itself admirably as a parable for the state of American politics at the time. Sure his use of an almost all-black cast for Sgt. Elias' half of the troop and all-white cast (a good few with strong "hick" accents) for Sgt. Bob's half is a bit heavy-handed, but the point is still solid.
This is also probably a really good film to watch just to cast light on a lot of what happens in Stone's other films. Ultimately this is the only Stone film I've seen so far that I've felt comfortable calling a "Stone film" because of his strong and specific approach to it. Nothing in this seems as gratuitously extreme, only necessarily extreme.
--PolarisDiB