Platoon trailer

Films can be made relevant to the times and shine the light on histories of the past with a more realistic view. Many would agree that the Vietnam War was something of a travesty. Many people didn’t understand why we were there in the first place, so this war was a major failure. There were many movies that tried to capture the essence of the Vietnam war, but Oliver Stone’s Platoon does the best job of capturing the realism from a soldier’s point of view. He was a Vietnam veteran and was writing from his personal experience. Many people that seen the film also had a lot to say about its realistic nature of the Vietnam War. It’s even hard to find any critic’s review of its inaccuracy which goes to show the type of quality and excellence in this film. The film has a wide range of different characters who segregate themselves into groups. Each person with their own set of unique personalities and different backgrounds. All working together with two simple goals in mind, kill the enemy and stay alive. How they go about it is where this film really shines. After experiencing guerilla warfare, everyone is affected differently, but mostly in a negative way. The more the film progresses, the more the film shows what goes through a person’s mind after experiencing such chaos. The film will really give you an understating of how the Vietnam war got so bad and how a “regular” person can commit such atrocities.  

Crazed Chris dance scene

Chris, the protagonist, volunteers to join the U.S. Army to fight the war and is assigned to an infantry platoon led by the inexperienced Lieutenant Wolfe. The soldiers mainly followed the two Sergeants within the platoon, Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias. Both different in their ways, Barnes being more hardened and Elias being more reasonable. Chris is immediately sent out with the platoon for a planned ambush of the North Vietnamese army. During the night, he sees the enemy coming but couldn’t take it upon himself to fire the first shot. During the gun fight, one of his fellow recruits gets killed and Chris is lightly wounded. Chris starts to see the reality of the war that first night. You can see his mentality shift from seeing the value in another person’s life (when he hesitated to shoot), to the survival of himself and his comrades (the anger and rage he shows later in the film). This becomes especially more relevant when he gets to know his fellow comrades in the platoon and forms a deep bound with a couple of them, mainly with Sergeant Elias. During the film, you get to see Chris’s many struggles he had within himself and that of the group dynamics within the platoon. He sums up everything in the end by saying, “I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves.” 

Platoon ending scene

Platoon was released on December 19, 1986 and grossed $138.5 million with a $6 million budget. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound and Best Film Editing. The film had great reviews from film critics with an approval rating of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Washington Post dated January 16, 1987, entitled, Platoon, written by Paul Attanasio writes, “Platoon is a triumph for Oliver Stone.” Attanasio mentions how Platoon is the first serious youth movie and how war is like a rite of passage. He also mentioned how the two groups in the platoon go through some sort of civil war with each other. Attanasio argues that Platoon was a well written movie and complimented Oliver Stone for his great work with the movie. The famous critic, Roger Ebert, called Platoon, “the best film of 1986.” He commended it for its realism of showing how war is not fun and that there are no standard heroes. 

Platoon is a war movie that shows many different sides of humanity. It’s a blockbuster that pits the heroes against the villains, but those simple terms don’t do justice for this type of movie. Chris, the protagonist, is a privileged white guy that left college and volunteered for the war. He felt that it was wrong for the rich privileged people not to get picked for the war and he wanted to do his part. This shows the good side of humanity. Later, after a few gun fights, he gets mad at a physically and mentally handicapped man for having a smile on his face. Filled with rage, he instructs the man to dance while shooting at his feet. This is the bad side of humanity. Released in 1986, Platoon came out during a great event for humanity. Occurring on May 25, 1986 was Hands Across. This was the first event of its kind in which millions of Americans joined together and held hands to form a continuous human chain across the U.S. That same year also showed us the worst side of humanity in which Patrick Sherrill, a postal worker, shot several of his coworkers and killed himself right after. This reminds me of the scene from Platoon in which Sergeant Burnes kills an innocent female villager and threatened to kill the daughter as well if the father didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Platoon tackles a lot of questions about humanity and our society. One of the reasons why this movie did so well at the box office was how well it answered those questions.