‘Platoon’ Download and Reviews
“Platoon” Movie Details
Platoon tagline: The first casualty of war is innocence.
 Platoon DVD Cover |
Actors:
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Sgt. Warren |
“Platoon” Movie Review
“Platoon” Plot Summary
A young recruit in Vietnam faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.
Best War Movie Ever Made
PLATOON is the best war movie ever made. It’s dark, harrowing, complex, and thrilling. But because so much attention is paid to Oliver Stone’s real life status as a Vietnam vet, most people assume the story is totally original and totally based on one man’s first-hand experience. I, on the other hand, would like to suggest some of the literary and cultural roots of the classic film
Norman Mailer’s THE NAKED AND THE DEAD presented a vision of jungle combat in World War II that obviously inspired Oliver Stone in many ways. Both emphasize the fact that the soldiers are drawn from the lowest level of society. Both show the war as being run by selfish elites who take no part in the suffering and dying
Both are dominated by a cruel villain — Sgt. Barnes in PLATOON is in many ways a perfect replica of Sgt. Croft. Both are Army lifers, both enjoy torturing and killing helpless victims, both talk in terms of authority and control being more important than justice or even logic. Both are perfectly willing to use cold-blooded murder as a way to hold on to authority among their own troops. Both are presented as being Southerners/Westerners, linked to the genocide of the Indians and the lawless violence of the frontier. The name ‘Barnes’ is a play on ‘Croft’ since both link to the farming past and to the rural America big city boys like Mailer and Stone both (fairly or unfairly) detest
But Oliver Stone goes beyond Mailer in many ways. While in Mailer’s book the attempts by Lieutenant Hearn and Red Valsen to stand up to Croft are almost pathetically ineffective, PLATOON presents both Elias and later, even Chris Taylor as fully capable of defying Barnes and demanding justice. This is what gives the movie a far greater power and resonance than Mailer’s book
Moreover, Stone is not afraid of mysticism and symbolism, and he is not shackled by the socialist-realist documentary aesthetics of Mailer’s novel. Thus while Red Valsen ‘must’ be a working man and a left-wing stick figure, Elias’ ethnic and economic background is left a mystery. In the same way, Barnes, while clearly linked to the mean rednecks of the platoon and the violence of the Old West, is also linked to more compelling and even sympathetic tragic heroes, such as Captain Ahab and even — dare one say it — Count Dracula
Tom Berenger is a much better actor than Bela Lugosi, to be sure. But notice the similarities. Just as Dracula is always seen with the whining, submissive Renfield in tow, so Barnes is always being compared to his wheedling, repulsive sidekick O’Neill. Just as Dracula cannot die, so Barnes also seems to be immortal. (One of the good men even says, ‘Barnes ain’t meant to die.’) Barnes all but quotes Dracula in the chilling scene in the bunker when he dares (or begs) the good men of the platoon to kill him. His seemingly offhand remark — ‘death? What do you all know about death?’ — suggests that Barnes cannot die because he is already dead. This is eerily reminiscent of Dracula’s statement that ‘to die — to be really dead — that must be glorious.’ The point here is that PLATOON is indeed a brutal, realistic look at Vietnam, but it is also a classic movie which draws upon a whole host of literary and film classics for its mythic resonance and power
What a magnificent and yet tragic achievement for Oliver Stone!
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