Platoon (1986) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Platoon was widely acclaimed at the time, and made an excellent Oscar showing in 1986. It won Best Picture, Best Director and two other trophies. It was also a box office success, and a popular newsmagazine cover story. The viewers at IMDb consider it Oliver Stone's best film, and rate it in the top 150 films ever made. Stone also wrote the script, and it is his most autobiographical, being a fictionalization of his own experiences as a grunt in 'Nam. In parallel to the character, Stone, although a university student and the son of a stockbroker, eagerly enlisted and fought alongside the poor draftees. He knew that he had made a mistake from Day One.

On the negative side, it includes some heavy-handed symbolism in the dialogue and situations. You see, poor Charlie Sheen (as the Oliver Stone character) is a soul being fought over by Satan and Jesus, in the form of two sergeants, Barnes and Elias,  played by Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe (Dafoe is pretty much the stock Jesus, isn't he?). Sheen even makes a concluding voice-over, in which he declares that those two men have continued to battle for his soul all of his life.

Berenger's character is a great soldier, fearless in battle and tough as nails, but he is the darkest side to which a man's soul could sink in Vietnam. Knowing (rightly) that even the women and children in the villages can represent a real threat, he shows no mercy in his investigations and interrogations of the locals, killing old ladies and holding a gun to the heads of children - whatever it takes. Dafoe's character is also a tough soldier, but approaches war without the vicious paranoia. His only real concern is to get himself and his platoon home alive, and he thinks that can be done without Berenger's draconian solutions. Sheen/Stone goes over briefly to the dark side. Stuck out in the jungle without adequate sleep, physically ill, consumed by fear in the nighttime firefights, Sheen is at first infected by Berenger's paranoia, and even goes so far as to make an old villager dance a jig to the hail of bullets from his automatic weapon. He gradually fights to retain his respect for the value of human life.

The real war in Platoon is not between the USA and Vietnam, but between the two factions inside the American platoon, the gung-ho Berenger boys versus the stoners who follow the path of Dafoe.

It's a great DVD, as we have come to expect from Oliver Stone. Once again, he co-operated with a documentary and contributed a full-length commentary which is consistently interesting. There is also an additional commentary track by the military advisor for the film.