An Oliver Stone film

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2003)

The title of my comment really says it all. Oliver Stone is not known for his subtlety, his intelligence as a filmmaker or his writing skills. Such is the tragedy of Platoon.
Platoon tells the story of a young, innocent man, Chris (Charlie Sheen) who volunteers for the Vietnam war, to contribute to the country he has taken so much from. Here, he witnesses some terrible atrocities, and falls under the influence of drugs and apathy. There is a good vs. evil conflict in not just the war aspect of the film, but Stone's humanitarian aspect too. Tom Berenger plays the hard-nosed veteran who frequently clashes with Willem Dafoe's protective one. However, this is a war film, and as the bodies pile up- so does the chaos for Chris, both physically and emotionally.
Platoon, in a sense, has the same problem as Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, itself a Vietnam movie made in the late 80s, over a decade after the end of the war. Platoon is essentially a film of two parts, but unlike FMJ, the two parts of Platoon do not comply with the narrative. (In FMJ, the training section of the film gave us insight to a part of Vietnam we never saw before- and so therefore the actual fighting, which we had seen before, was a let-down.)
The first hour of Platoon is masterful, and proof that Oliver Stone can be coherent and subtle as a director and a writer. The second half of the film however is a total mess. Unlike FMJ, it has not to blame the narrative constraints- but the writing and directing of the film itself. The immediately striking, coherent battle sequences of the first half become muddled and irritating in the second. The emotional impact of the film becomes deadened by over simplicity and the film becomes repetitive with Stone just lurching from one battle to the next.
With Natural Born Killers, Stone used his excessive film making techniques as both self-parody and media commentary, with explosive and shocking results. The miscasting of John C. McGinley doesn't help, as the cowardly comformist and neither does the underuse of Willem Dafoe. That said, the final sequence of the film regains a sense of lost direction and rescues the movie from an otherwise "A.I."-like second half slump.

Flawed, frustrating yet mind numbingly tragic, Platoon is a worthy addition to the Vietnam movie pantheon, although hardly the greatest of the Vietnam movies. Watch Stone's "Born on the fourth of July" instead, for a more satisfying Vietnam experience. Or Apocalypse Now, or The Deer Hunter for the best Vietnam films.