A young man volunteering for Vietnam witnesses his fellow troops being corrupted by inner conflict!

Rating: 9/10 (8 October 2011)

In my eyes the best film Oliver Stone ever made, Platoon mirrors his own experiences as a GI serving time in Vietnam.
The story is told from the point of view of runt Chris Taylor, an educated boy who volunteers to serve in the war, who discovers that patrolling the jungles around Cambodia not only drastically raises the mortality rate, it renders him completely worthless in the eyes of those who've served any amount of time longer than he has.
Quickly outliving his fellow runts, Taylor sees a line in the sand drawn between the laid back and sympathetic Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe in a very emotionally memorable role) and his pot smoking troops and the hard-edged Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger in an equally powerful but darker role) and his beer and whiskey drinking ass-kickers. He immediately chooses to side with Elias' squad, just wanting to make it through the war with his mind in tact but that hope doesn't last so long as the deeper into the jungle they roam, and the more horrors they witness, the powers that be and their backers become corrupted by hatred towards the Vietnamese and one another.
Soon enough, the conflict rages out of control and when the enemy launches a massive offensive, the platoon is barely able to fight their way out after communication between them has completely broken down.
Platoon boasts possibly the largest number of relatively fresh stars launched into movie stardom and legend status for any film in history although there were some familiar faces that had featured in successful titles some years before such as Keith David (The Thing) and Tom Berenger (Dogs of War). Other names include Charlie Sheen (Two And A Half Men), Forest Whittaker (Phenomenon), Tony Todd (Candyman), Kevin Dillon (Entourage), John C. McGinley (Scrubs), Johnny Depp (who???) and the list goes on.
'Platoon' boasts a massive multi-strand narrative telling not only the story of the war and the overbearing in-fighting between Elias and Barnes, but also the individual stories of soldiers destined to either go home or just fill another black rubber bag. It's touching even to see someone we don't like very much spouting obscenities like a broken record player one moment and then their bloody lifeless body being thrown on the pile the next moment and that imagery sums up the war for so many people; kids just working themselves into bad habits, watching their best friends die and knowing deep down that they are going to die too. It makes every tiny little indiscretion worth fighting for and that's why they all end up jumping at each others' throats, acting more like a lynch-mob than a platoon.
It also boasts the most organic scenery ever used in a film of its kind and, of course, the now legendary 'Adagio For Strings' theme by Samuel Barber, which was made so memorable in its many scenes imprinted on the impressionable human mind.
The perfect mix of drama and action, comedy and tragedy, feel-good factor and depression any war film could hope for, Platoon reaches a conclusion that not only hits you like a bullet between the eyes, it leaves you wondering what happened to all those left behind, the ones that survived up until the final credits!