The greatest film about Vietnam.

Rating: 9/10 (10 March 2004)

This is the first in a quadrilogy of reviews I'm set to write on the four great Vietnam movies (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now).
Even before I learned about the background to this movie, I had decided that it was my personal favourite film about Vietnam. After I learnt about how Oliver Stone actually was a soldier in the war and wrote the script based on his own experiences, I believe more adamantly than ever that this is probably the greatest war film ever made.
Charlie Sheen's character arrives in Vietnam, a principled kid from a privileged background who simply wants to do his part and fight for his country. The war very quickly takes it's toll on him, and over a period of weeks he becomes completely exhausted and more than a little insane. In the platoon he's joined there are two veteran soldiers played memorably by Tom Berenger and William Dafoe, who are depicted as supermen, almost unkillable -- and they represent the morality of the story. None of the men are exactly 'good' anymore, they're all killers certainly, but these two characters show us that there IS a line, and they stand on opposite sides of it. The main character perceives that these two men are fighting for possession of his soul, a typical ego-centric philosophy student kind of conclusion, but in a way they do represent a battle that is going on within this man, and that's what the story is really about.
All of the actors involved had to endure two weeks of intense training and exercises which were aimed to teach them exactly what it was like to be a soldier in Vietnam, and in the making of this film there were moments when they really seemed to believe that they were there. There's one scene towards the end where John C. McGinley's character is upset because he doesn't think he'll make it out of the next battle alive, and he gives a great performance where he is extremely emotional and close to tears -- but there's just one snag. He wasn't supposed to cry during that scene. The only take without tears was the one that they used in the film. On the DVD, there's an interview with Charlie Sheen where he says with a straight face that there were moments during shooting when he didn't think he'd make it out of there alive.
It wasn't an easy project for Oliver Stone either, as there were certain scenes that seemed to spark memories for him as he'd obviously written them about something that had happened to him. The film provoked pretty much the same reaction from the veterans who saw it, everyone felt that he'd truly captured something, which is probably why it won the oscars for best picture and best director that year.
You'll never hear Adaggio for Strings in quite the same way again. 5/5 (a classic, absolutely unmissable).