Platoon (1986) * * *

Directed by:  Oliver Stone

Starring:  Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, John C. McGinley, Mark Moses, Johnny Depp, Corey Glover, Forest Whitaker, Keith David, Kevin Dillon

Platoon doesn't define the Vietnam War in any simplistic terms, because nothing about it was simple.  Ambivalence and confusion reigned supreme in enemy jungles thousands of miles away from home.
Platoon is at its best when it documents and observes the hell that went on there, and the mental and physical toll it took on the men on the front lines.    In between battles, the soldiers took refuge in drugs or drink.   It was rare to find someone who engaged in neither. 

Platoon is seen through the eyes of nineteen-year-old Chris Taylor (Sheen), a college dropout who idealistically joined the military to fight for his country.    It doesn't take long for Chris to realize he made a grave, possibly fatal mistake.   Chris is based on writer-director Oliver Stone himself, who served in Vietnam, and he narrates the proceedings in letters home to his family.   Is the narration necessary?   Not particularly.  Platoon would've been better served without it.   Chris is soon swept up in the internal power struggle between Sgt. Barnes (Berenger), who sports a long, nasty scar on his face and survived being shot seven times in the line of duty, and Sgt. Elias (Dafoe), who is trying his best to hold on to any shred of humanity he has left.   Barnes is not against shooting villagers he suspects might be harboring Viet Cong, while Elias opposes such actions.   It would be easy to label Barnes as a villain and Elias a hero, but Platoon doesn't see morality with such clarity or certitude.
Further interactions between the two men only muddy the waters.

We also meet the other soldiers, who find themselves entrenched in either Barnes' or Elias' camp, including Sgt. O'Neill (McGinley), a wormy Barnes brown noser, King (David), a short-timer counting the days until his tour is finished, Bunny (Dillon), a scared private who edges slowly towards derangement, and the feckless Lt. Wolfe (Moses), who is in way over his head.    Barnes and Elias are the most fleshed out supporting players, and the roles earned Berenger and Dafoe Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations.   It's easy to see why.  The actors take what look to be cookie cutter roles and provide dimensions which don't make it easy for us to judge them. 

There are battle scenes unlike most you've seen before.   Even the ones that take place in daylight are difficult to follow, and that's the idea.    Stone and cinematographer Robert Richardson create a whirlwind of heightened confusion as bullets whiz by, explosions erupt, and soldiers not knowing for sure who or what they're shooting at.  We aren't sure of our own footing, let alone the enemy's. 

Who wins these battles?   Those who manage to stay alive when the gunfire ceases.    Pretty soon, the soldiers' objective is to survive for another day, or even another hour.

Platoon won Best Picture in 1986, with Stone winning Best Director.   It is not a perfect film.   The ending confrontation between Chris and Barnes is a little too tidy.   The battle scenes are effective in the short run, but tend to drag on longer than needed.    What Stone makes clear, and further illustrates in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), is that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and cost thousands of lives on both sides in the name of ostensibly stopping the spread of Communism.    America indeed lost the war, as Elias predicts in one of the few quiet scenes in Platoon, and in the years following the war, Vietnam veterans continued to lose.   This isn't me saying it, this is Stone himself saying it, and he fought there.