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Often parodied in movies like Hot Shots: Part Deux and Tropic Thunder, I feel like Platoon is sometimes looked at nowadays with a bit of derision due to its dramatic focus, its slightly unrealistic portrayal of combat, and its datedness. Having watched this now, I think this is a somewhat unfair treatment of this movie. While there certainly have been movies that covered the Vietnam War, from what I can pick up, Platoon was actually the first one who gave it the cynical and gritty treatment. Platoon is also interesting because I think it's the only war movie to date that was actually directed by a real-life veteran, Oliver Stone.
In Platoon, the story is told from the perspective of Chris, a fresh-off-the-plane soldier going into Vietnam. Chris is interesting because he states that, even though he actually could have avoided the draft, he felt he had a responsibility to be in Vietnam regardless as he thought it unfair that the rich didn't have to suffer the draft whereas the poor did. He has also joined for a very typical reason. Because he wanted to prove something to himself.
As we follow Chris, we sometimes get his narration in the form of letters he writes to his family back home. It's easy to make fun of his brooding and philosophical narration nowadays, but if looked at from a fresh perspective, the narration makes sense. Chris is young but somewhat intelligent and well-educated. Naturally, his writing will match that, and furthermore, we get a little more insight into his perspective than we would without the narration. A last thing to consider as well is that while it's easy for us to giggle some at the drama in his narration, try rucking it through the Vietnamese brush sometime for days on end carrying a fuckton of gear, and all the while hoping you don't get shot in the ass, and then let's see how cheery your letters to your family are gonna be.
What's also great about Platoon is the whole dynamic between the grim, tough, and cynical Sgt. Barnes and the more hopeful and ethical Sgt. Elias. I think this is the actual main plot of Platoon. This fight between the lost and the unbroken. And boy oh boy, is Barnes a grim motherfucker as we find out later in the film. He does have one rather badass quote though that I will give here.
There is perhaps one thing you could penalize this movie for though, and that is that the combat is just realistic enough to make it eyebrow-raising when the combat sometimes breaks from reality. One of the more egregious examples I can think of with this is how some characters in an intense firefight will just walk to a place while there's bullets and explosives flying everywhere. Another example is how the sound effects sometimes don't fully match what we're actually seeing. An example of THIS is when a soldier is beating another to death with his rifle, but it sounds like he's just slapping a bit of rubber on a table. Yeah, kinda takes you out of the scene.
There's other things too, but I'm willing to give these issues a bit of a pass because I know this movie is not as focused on the combat so much as the character drama and the day-to-day lives of the soldiers in Vietnam. It's focused more on telling an effective story instead of being an absolutely faithful 1:1 carbon copy of the war. And with that, I would definitely give this movie a watch, and I find, the more I think about it, the more I like it.
In Platoon, the story is told from the perspective of Chris, a fresh-off-the-plane soldier going into Vietnam. Chris is interesting because he states that, even though he actually could have avoided the draft, he felt he had a responsibility to be in Vietnam regardless as he thought it unfair that the rich didn't have to suffer the draft whereas the poor did. He has also joined for a very typical reason. Because he wanted to prove something to himself.
As we follow Chris, we sometimes get his narration in the form of letters he writes to his family back home. It's easy to make fun of his brooding and philosophical narration nowadays, but if looked at from a fresh perspective, the narration makes sense. Chris is young but somewhat intelligent and well-educated. Naturally, his writing will match that, and furthermore, we get a little more insight into his perspective than we would without the narration. A last thing to consider as well is that while it's easy for us to giggle some at the drama in his narration, try rucking it through the Vietnamese brush sometime for days on end carrying a fuckton of gear, and all the while hoping you don't get shot in the ass, and then let's see how cheery your letters to your family are gonna be.
What's also great about Platoon is the whole dynamic between the grim, tough, and cynical Sgt. Barnes and the more hopeful and ethical Sgt. Elias. I think this is the actual main plot of Platoon. This fight between the lost and the unbroken. And boy oh boy, is Barnes a grim motherfucker as we find out later in the film. He does have one rather badass quote though that I will give here.
Sgt. Barnes said:
There is perhaps one thing you could penalize this movie for though, and that is that the combat is just realistic enough to make it eyebrow-raising when the combat sometimes breaks from reality. One of the more egregious examples I can think of with this is how some characters in an intense firefight will just walk to a place while there's bullets and explosives flying everywhere. Another example is how the sound effects sometimes don't fully match what we're actually seeing. An example of THIS is when a soldier is beating another to death with his rifle, but it sounds like he's just slapping a bit of rubber on a table. Yeah, kinda takes you out of the scene.
There's other things too, but I'm willing to give these issues a bit of a pass because I know this movie is not as focused on the combat so much as the character drama and the day-to-day lives of the soldiers in Vietnam. It's focused more on telling an effective story instead of being an absolutely faithful 1:1 carbon copy of the war. And with that, I would definitely give this movie a watch, and I find, the more I think about it, the more I like it.
