A good war movie that perhaps misses something important.

Rating: 5/10 (21 October 2014)

The Vietnam War. From March 1965 to April 1975. Technically. They signed a Peace Treaty in January 1973 but the fighting continued until August 1973. The last US troops left in 1975. This film, Platoon, is a slice of the Vietnam War. Through the eyes of one film producer. In a way I think that Hollywood has never really talked much about the 'whats and the wherefores' of that particular war, in any of its films-even in the iconic 1979 film Apocalypse Now. Which is the best of the bunch of Vietnam War movies. In Platoon you get a fairly predictable depiction of soldiers who would rather be partying, struggling through hip deep swamps and cutting their way through dense packed jungle-hunted at all times and none too happy about it. None of the films about Vietnam mentions the ongoing US space program that just happened to happen at the exact same time as the Vietnam War. I wouldn't be impressed with the space program if I was lying down in mud, in the rain, in clothes that haven't been washed for a month, in order to avoid getting my head blown off by a bunch of people I'd never laid eyes on before, in a country I never had any interest in. I think the feelings of patriotism that followed the initial US decision to enter into a ground war in Vietnam in 1965 faded rapidly when the bodies stated coming home. By the thousands. This movie is a slice of life during the Vietnam War but its conspicuous avoidance of mentioning the ongoing US space program-which would have been on peoples minds-is 'selective memory' on the part of the scriptwriting. It wasn't "that bad"-it was 'very much worse', in my humble opinion. Few haven't seen this film by now.