A Vietnam War movie that actually shows US atrocities.

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2018)

Platoon is a brilliantly crafted film, made by a director who actually served in the Vietnam war. What makes Platoon especially unusual IMO is its realistic depiction of deliberate and sickening atrocities by US troops. I can think of very few other US made war films where this is so, at least not without some 'justification'.
Americans tend to be very jingoistic about their super powerful military, and incredibly myopic about the many morally questionable actions it has carried out around the world since WW2. That a Hollywood movie would actually confront a domestic US audience with the terrible atrocities that US troops committed in Vietnaam is a geniune surpise.
Around 4 million Vietnamese citizens died in the war, a huge proportion of those by US bombs and bullets, either by inetentional action or by 'collaterall damage'. Of those killed around 1/4 were children under the age of 13. The Vietnam war is a stain on the moral concscience of the US (such as it is). That this was the case was recognised by the millions of young US anti-war protestors at the time who did not want any part in it and fought the draft (note there were almost no anti-war protestors during WW2 conscription). The depressing thing is that the anti-war conscience of this generation, many of whom hold power today, has not tempered recent US military policy or actions.
Even though Oliver Stone (in his film "Platoon") makes Americans face-up to the reprhensible actions their soldiers carried out in Vietnaam, he still feels compelled to weave this reality into a storyline of 'good v evil' 'ying v yang', i.e. Sgt Barnes v. Sgt Elias. That way the audience is left feeling, Oh well, that was just one bad dude, Sgt Barnes. The reality was there were countless 'bad dudes' from the Private level to likes of General Westmoreland.
The My Lai massacre and the subsequent pardoning of Lt Calley, perhaps the crowning US atrocity of the Vietnam war, was to be the subject of another Stone movie "Pinksville". However, I doubt this movie will ever be made, because a US audience will not want to see it, and there is no easy way of weaving good guy Sgt Elias characters into that shameful episode.