Does not live up to its reputation...

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2001)

I put off seeing this film, despite being an Oliver Stone fan, after getting more than my fill of Vietnam war movies. 15 years after its theatrical release, I had the chance to catch it for the first time on the special edition DVD (an excellent disc, btw).
My reaction?
This film has aged very poorly. Either that or it wasn't much good to begin with. I noticed that almost all the situations are hackneyed (young, innocent solider getting killed without any reason, the Southern "good old boys" as war mongers, the immoral murder of simple villagers, etc). The dialogue is flat. Charlie Sheen is, as always, absolutely horrible. It is embarassing to see him up on the screen with such talented actors as Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe. He is just absolutely out of his league. Johnny Depp is given a tiny supporting role when Stone should have given him the Sheen part...Depp being the (much) superior actor. In fact, we spend way too much time with Sheen and not enough with Forrest Whitaker, Depp, and Keith David.
As others have commented, this isn't a narrative but a collection of individual scenarios that Stone has put together. Unfortunately, most of these scene are present in other films and done much better (Full Metal Jacket).
The lines that Stone draws between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" is absolutely ridiculous: the bad guys are generally racist Southerners and the good guys are enlightened potheads. They're about as two dimensional as you'd expect from a war movie.
If you want to see a great war movie, skip this one. Full Metal Jacket and The Thin Red Line are more raw and engaging than this film will ever be. To be perfectly honest, the documentary included on the special edition DVD is much, much more interesting than the movie itself.
One final note: Tom Berenger holds his own against Dafoe, Whitaker, and Depp. I am very curious as to why his career never took off as those others did. He controls every scene he is in and this viewer was hanging on every line that he delievered. What a shame he is stuck doing garbage like "The Substitute"....