A masterpiece with timeless philosophical meaning

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2019)

I don't know how I've lived without this movie until today. It was released the year I was born and it spoke to me as if it was fresh and new. This is definitely Oliver Stone's masterpiece, and my respect for the director only increased right now.
In Platoon, we not only see the horrors of the Vietnam war - we see a brutal and honest portrait of the many war crimes the American army committed, how millions of Vietnamese civilians were murdered, how entire millenarian villages were decimated and how, in the end, this is one of the most ignorant, gratuitous, unwarranted and pathetic wars of all times - aren't them all?
But although all these facts already make Platoon one of the greatest movies of all times, surprisingly, they are not what make it a masterpiece. The real geniality in Platoon is to raise philosophical questions about the relevance of war and the duality of humankind - with its flawlessly constructed and complex characters, we see that nobody is entirely bad or good, and we also see that sometimes morally condemned acts will be justified by opportunists as an "unnecessary evil".
Technically speaking, the movie is impeccable. A 2-hour-long war movie that feels like it lasts only 30 minutes, because tension and action is maintained at their peak the whole time, and you don't want to blink to miss anything. Edition is something to be acclaimed as well, because the war scenes were absurdly difficult to be filmed and yet in a multidimensional environment which is a battle camp scene where everything happens simultaneously they managed to show everything that was happening without confounding the audience - all scenes were explicit, clear and understandable. Everything had a point or a reason to be shown.
Needless to say, this is the quintessential Willem Dafoe movie. I have always thought he is one of the greatest actors of all times and he's terrible underrated. I now am very sorry for the fact he didn't win any relevant award for this performance - few actors could deliver the emotion and the charisma he delivered only with his eyes and his body language. I have to say the same thing about Tom Berenger - that acting was the work of genius - and yet both Tom and Willem were nominated for an Academy Award and neither of them won, in the year when Platoon won for Best Picture. Charlie Sheen and Forest Whitaker also shone as well - it's absurdly refreshing to, every once in a while, to watch a movie in which the ENTIRE CAST can actually ACT and do a great job.
As if this movie didn't have enough qualities, cinematography is another undeniable quality of this capolavoro - the green palette in the entire movie highlights the blood and the human expressions amid the horrors of war - and beautiful and iconic scenes (such as the one portrayed in the movie poster) were filmed in such a gorgeous way that they will certainly be in my mind forever. I have never seen aerial shots done so masterfully like I did here.
Platoon is neither a horror show or a gruesome war movie - you won't see a blood battle here, though the battle scenes are relevant. The point of the movie is, fortunately, not to shock the audience with blood or mutilated limbs - the aim of this work is to startle us with the horrors of human nature - and how apparently normal people can hide monsters that will be only released in the right conditions.
There were scenes halfway into this movie that made me cry in desperation and lose my breath like any other movie could. To think that events like that happened in real life only made me feel even more miserable and question how exactly humankind evolved throughout the years. Are we really civilized? Are we actually becoming a better species? Oliver Stone, with his brilliant plot and direction, created a masterpiece who will be imprinted in our minds not only as the portrait of one of most terrifying genocides of all times - his work will resonate as the fire that stirs philosophical questionings about the true meaning of life, humanity and morality. Unfortunately, when we watch this work of genius we realize the world hasn't changed much since then. That says a lot about what kind of humans we've become. That proves how relevant this movie is today - and it has impressed my mind and heart like only very few movies could.
May God bless the souls of whoever died in those very dark times.