#72: PLATOON (1986)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, a few times

BEST SEQUENCE

The fate of Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe)

BEST LINE

“What happened today is just the beginning. We’re gonna lose this war. We’ve been kicking other people’s asses for so long, I figure it’s time we got ours kicked.”

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

89%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Informed by director Oliver Stone's personal experiences in Vietnam, Platoon forgoes easy sermonizing in favor of a harrowing, ground-level view of war, bolstered by no-holds-barred performances from Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man in conflict."

THOUGHTS

• Similar to what I had to say about Full Metal Jacket, another movie about the Vietnam War, it's not quite right to call Platoon entertaining, even though it will have your full attention for the duration of the movie. It's not quite right to call it thrilling, either, even though it will have your heart pounding. I think the best way to describe it is gripping. It's an incredibly hard-to-watch movie, but you just can't look away
• Chief among the difficult sequences would be when the American soldiers invade a Vietnamese village where they find an enemy supply cache. It's the kind of sequence that will stick with you for a long time after the movie ends
• It's a harrowing, visceral film that assaults the senses and shows the horrors of war without glorifying it. In fact, it was the first movie about Vietnam that was directed by a veteran. Oliver Stone was deployed there from September 27, 1967, to February 23, 1968, and he doesn't pull any punches in depicting what it was like. The battle scenes are especially vivid
• Finally, this is a tremendous cast of mostly young actors. Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger are all fantastic as the main three characters, but you also have Forest Whitaker, Keith David, Johnny Depp, John C. McGinley and, as one of the most detestable characters, Kevin Dillon (probably best known as Johnny Drama from Entourage). It was very jarring at times to hear Johnny Drama's voice coming out of this baby-faced psychopath

Up next: It's going to be a long while before we have another Vietnam War movie on the AFI list, The Deer Hunter at #30. So, let's supplement the list again with one more, appropriately enough starring Charlie Sheen's dad, Martin. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, from 1979