Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
You are, I trust, familiar with the limited police action undertaken by the US of A in Vietnam back in the sixties. It proved controversial.
Enter, then Oliver Stone, whose personal experiences during the war no doubt heavily informed Platoon, and his further films Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth, and I would imagine also the mindset and characterisation of Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor, a son of privilege who dropped out of university to do his part for the Stars and Uncle Sam, just like his father and his father’s father before him.
He finds, however, like all wars once the propaganda wears off, a world of hurt. He’s dropped into a platoon of the 25th Infantry Division in the sweltering jungles, and struggles to find his feet. He meets and rubs up against the various characters composing the platoon, played by the likes of the extraordinarily young looking John C. McGinley, Johnny Depp, and Forest Whitaker.
However, the real conflict at the heart of Platoon is not with the Viet Cong, but between the two defacto leaders of the platoon, Tom Berenger’s Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes and Willem Dafoe’s Sergeant Elias Gordon. Elias has maintained as much morality and principles as can be reasonably expected from someone sent expressly to perform violence, whereas Barnes is taking a, no doubt from his perspective more pragmatic, take no prisoners, kill-em-all-and-let-god-sort-’em-out approach to this. Hearts and minds, but only if the hearts and minds are extracted from the bodies.
For a while, it’s looks like it’s shaping up to be the story of the impressionable young Sheen swaying between these two embodiments of the dual faces of war, the high minded ideals that (hopefully) started the war, and the desperate struggle to survive the damn thing once you’re there, although once the actual war crimes start happening, well, it turns into a fight to survive with your principles while dodging the backstabbing of those on your own side who don’t share them.
It’s a hell of film, particularly for only six million dollars, no doubt reflecting it being seen as a risky proposition for the studio that, as it happens, payed off both at the box office and critically – despite The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now being things by this point. Charlie Sheen seems to have been someone who’s been a parody of himself since 1991, so it’s easy to forget that he was actually good, in the dim and distant past, like in here. He’s joined by a raft of equally committed performances across the board, which really sells the narrative.
You could, perhaps, make a case that this narrative is being told rather heavy handedly here. There’s not a lot of subtlety or nuance to any of these actions, and while I suppose it’s to show the effects of repeated exposure to the inhumanity of war, a few characters just seem to go straight to outright evil as fast as possible. It’s not as pronounced as in Casualties of War, but it’s certainly not doing much to challenge your view of war-time morality or present much of a defence of Barnes and his followers mindset. Of course, perhaps the point is there simply isn’t one, regardless of the pressure of war.
So, yes, hell of a film. Not one that we could call enjoyable, really, but it’s compelling viewing and holds up very well in Space Year 2019.