Superior war film

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2004)

Back before Oliver Stone forgot that a good film had to have a good story he made this one. It remains his best.
This is the Vietnam War as I remember it: dangerous, confusing, and disheartening. I've known soldiers just like Stone's (he was a front-line grunt) and situations like he describes. Platoon, for all its artistic license, rings far more true than any other movie about the Vietnam conflict that I have seen. (The only other films that come close are "Casualties of War" and "Hamburger Hill." "Apocalypse Now" is too much of a head-trip to really ring true but, in certain scenes, it captures the exact feeling of the confused fear of combat.)
The entire cast is excellent.
Those who haven't seen this film should. It is that good and that important.
And Stone should have to watch it, too. Maybe it will remind him that he used to be a capable, if didactic, director and script writer.