When the Machine Breaks Down...

Rating: 7/10 (30 September 2019)

In Vietnam, the only war these men were fighting were themselves. Platoon is a treasured war picture about the Vietnam war. It's Oliver Stone's explosive debut as a big league filmmaker. Powerful and courageous was he to capture the inhumanity of the war, and it's affects on the average American soldier. Some are overtaken by it. These themes are familiar in Vietnam war movies, and shall I say, done significantly better. The one man account of the confused and hopeless nature of the war is far more effective in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The war's barbarity was captured more accurately in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Platoon by comparison falls into the issues of the formulaic. But big credit goes to performances by Willem Dafoe and Tom Bringer as the tyrannical and sadistic Sergeant Barnes.