Customer Reviews

Platoon

5 star:		(107)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Love it or hate it, this is the quintessential Vietnam movie. Personally, I've never understood why. The movie has only one message: War is Hell. So what else is new? I really don't want to spend 2 hours watching it. Perhaps Stone was trying to acheive a level of surreality, but it comes across as unbelievablity.

This is Stone's hollywood view of what occurred in Vietnam. More guilt trips than truth. As a 2 year in-country vet, I believe it is deplorable that he fails to note that the mission itself was an honorable one and so was the performance of the American soldier. He managed to contribute to the stereotype of the Vietnam soldier as a baby killer and drug addict, which is not the truth.This film does not belong in the same catagory as "The Longest Day".

I had heard so many great things about this movie. When I finally saw it, however, I could not make much of it.

The film has every Vietnam war film cliche in the book. The new recruit, the crazy commander, the rape, the pillaging, the final showdown where most of the character deaths happen...and I found it predictable in a lot of parts. Not to mention the plenty of inaccuracies found through out - the uniforms, the dialogue, the weaponry, the fact William Defoe gets blown away in equipment that should have protected him, then comes back as if he's OK.

There was one point in the movie that I liked. In the final scene, Oliver Stone put himself in the movie playing a Colonel. Then a suicide soldier of the VietCong throws himself into the HQ and blows himself up, killing everyone inside. That gave me some pleasure...

I first saw Platoon in a theater in Waikiki as a member of the 25th ID, which is the same division depicted in the film. A big chunk of the audience also seemed to be from Schofield Barracks. They cheered wildly at some parts, like whenever a charcter refered to "grunts" or killing VC. We were all very young and had no way to know what Vietnam was really like. I enjoyed the move. It's entertaining and well acted, but is very much more of a work of fiction than I at first realised. I came to this opinion after reading the book "Platoon - Bravo Company" by Robert Hemphill. He was Oliver Stone's company commander in Vietnam. His book paints a much more honorable picture of the unit and is much closer to my peace-time impression of the US Army than Stone's criminal/irresponsible characters. Read Hemphill's book and skip this movie.