Platoon is a story about making choices and the terror of a war. Autobiographic, and very moving!

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 1999)

I am a Quaker, meaning someone who does not believe in war. My view is that wars are a form of killing of the poor, the lower middle class, people get killed because there were no other jobs available to them except to join the military. It is also a form of making money, selling armaments and the struggle for power. I might be wrong in that! But that is my opinion.
When this movie came out I was in law school and I was fighting my own war at school as law school is much similar to a military regime. I was a basket case! This movie put terror in my head! I was terrified. I said that I would never watch a war movie again in my life! But I have overruled that principle. I felt that Chris, Charlie Sheen, had made a mistake that he admits in his letters to his grandmother. I kept asking myself why is this kid writing to the grandmother and not his mother. I have watched most of Stone's movies and had read most books written about him. I sense that this movie is autobiographic. Stone and his father could not see eye to eye on things, his parents got divorced when he was fifteen if I am not mistaken. He felt betrayed because he did not suspect that the divorce was coming and perhaps decided that he was alone in the world! When Stone was at Yale he decided to volunteer when he did not have to! Oh, God! Bless his soul! He believed innocently that he could serve his country. Viet Nam changed a naive innocent recruit who went to war, and allowed him to see the ambiguity of the war. The platoon started fighting between itself and killing innocent civilians, because the two sergeants could not get along. This conflict of choice turns the young recruit into a man that we now know as one the best writers, directors, producers of our days. As Chris, Stone seems to have his own opinions about things, (Stone is also the only child and this is an only child syndrome), he comes up with projects that he feels are the right thing to do and does them alive or dead! Stone parallels Chris' choice to go to war in his own life. He is very independent. There is always a price to pay for being independent! That is clear in Platoon.
I could never come up with stuff that Stone does. Still after having seen all that atrocity and although his movies are full of violence, he did not lose his faith and tenderness as one can see him in a cameo appearance in his movie Salvador, right at the beginning of the movie Stone kisses a little boy. Stone has a worldwide view because he himself admits feeling like a foreigner, his mother was a French Catholic woman and his father was Jewish. This movie is "one of the best war movies ever made", and Oscar worthy movie to me. As a woman, who is not a believer of war, the movie is about paying the price of our decisions. Chris as well as Oliver Stone did not have to volunteer to go to Viet Nam. They felt that they could make a difference as a young men going to war. Stone was wounded and earned a purple heart. The cast in this movie is superb as well as the music.
This is my parallel perception of the story of Chris/Stone in the platoon .. . I would like to see this movie re-released to be able to watch in its entirety without cuts.