Oliver Stone's gritty and emotionally overwhelming portrait of Vietnam

Rating: 10/10 (18 October 2008)

In 1986, Vietnam veteran-turned-filmmaker Oliver Stone directed "Platoon", a film that went on to score four wins at the Academy Awards, including one for Stone himself. And it is easy to see why a film such as "Platoon" could not only accomplish that but also go on to be considered one of the best motion pictures of all time. It is a gritty, horrifying, profanity-filled (but in a recommendable way) portrait of the unjustifiable Vietnam War and will continue to live on in the memories of audience members for ages to come.
"Platoon" stars Charlie Sheen in what I think is one of his better performances (it is nice to see a gifted actor like Sheen occasionally stepping away from the dull low-budget comedies he and others like him are often associated with) as Chris, a young recruit who enlists to fight in the Vietnam War, only to find in his experiences it was all a horrible mistake. He becomes part of a platoon of soldiers who are divided between their two sergeants, a violent fighter named Barnes (Tom Berenger) and the more calm and patient Elias (Willem Dafoe). Chris soon discovers that as a newcomer, he is not expected to live very long through the war and as time marches on and killing after killing passes, he begins to believe it too.
Aside from Sheen, Berenger, and Dafoe (the last two received Academy Award nominations for their performances in this film) the film stars Forrest Whittaker, Francesco Quinn, and a very young Johnny Depp among other gifted actors. They portray characters who are so wonderfully modeled by Oliver Stone's screenplay and so well fitted into this horrible wartime setting that from start to finish, it is nearly impossible for the audience to decipher which characters are going to be killed off and which, if any, are not. This enhances the atmosphere of the film and makes it seem more like a true story rather than just a motion picture detailing a fictional chapter of a real-life conflict.
There is a lot of profanity in "Platoon" that many viewers will find so much as to even describe the film as anti-American. There is excessive swearing, drugs, a rape scene, and a lot of gritty violence used in Stone's vision to capture the war that he experienced. But I don't see the profanity as part of an anti-American film, I see it as elements of a true work of art and in its own strange way, it works. In other films that use the same profanity (Predator 2 for instance) it becomes offensive, but here it adheres to the allegorical point. And the addition of Samuel Barber's classic music composition "Adagio for Strings" works out very well in the dramatic, tear-jerking moments.
Oliver Stone's "Platoon" is a masterwork of the fabulous art of motion pictures and I am very thankful to see that it is ranked as one of the best war pictures not just by critics, but audience members as well. It is a thrilling, well-acted film that in some scenes, especially the death of a character whom I will not reveal, even succeeded in bringing tears to my eyes.