Platoon (1986)

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Platoon is Oliver Stone’s 1986 American war film. The film depicts Private Chris Taylor as a college dropout who has volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam in 1967. Taylor arrives at his platoon and gradually finds his way through the moral divide between two non-commissioned officers. Staff Sergeant Robert Barnes works with ruthless violence that Taylor initially admires before recognizing its cost. Sergeant Elias Grodin works with humanity that Taylor eventually identifies as the correct moral approach.

The platoon engages in escalating violence including the village massacre that Stone modeled on the My Lai incident.

Charlie Sheen plays Chris Taylor. Tom Berenger plays Barnes. Willem Dafoe plays Elias. Forest Whitaker plays Big Harold. Francesco Quinn plays Rhah. John C. McGinley plays Sergeant O’Neill. Richard Edson plays Sal. Kevin Dillon plays Bunny. Reggie Johnson plays Junior. Keith David plays King. Johnny Depp plays Lerner. Stone wrote the screenplay from his own Vietnam combat experience.

Platoon hits me like a punch to the chest. I think it’s the most convincing Vietnam combat film anyone has made, and I can feel it in every detail of how these men carry their gear and talk to each other. It’s a 9, and it comes very close to a 10.

Hemdale Film Corporation produced the film on a budget of approximately 6 million dollars, and it grossed approximately 138 million dollars worldwide. The work won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director.

Platoon is the first major American Vietnam War film made by a combat veteran of the war. Oliver Stone served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968 with the 25th Infantry Division. His direct combat experience gave the film authority that no other major Vietnam production at the time could claim. Apocalypse Now (1979) had worked as metaphor. The Deer Hunter (1978) had worked as character study. Platoon worked as direct combat depiction filtered through Stone’s own experience.

The film’s commercial and critical success gave Stone career standing that the films that came after, including Wall Street (1987), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and JFK (1991), extended. Platoon remains the principal American Vietnam combat film. Later productions have rarely matched its particular quality of veteran-directed combat depiction.

The Veteran Direction

Oliver Stone directed Platoon from his own Vietnam combat experience.

The operations on screen reflect operations Stone took part in, the village destruction reflects events he witnessed, and the fights between platoon members reflect tensions he saw in his own units. I think that’s why the film feels lived-in. It’s autobiography filtered through dramatic structure, and I can’t imagine a researched version carrying the same authority.

The veteran direction produces material that research-based Vietnam productions can’t match.

Stone knows exactly how soldiers carried equipment, how they communicated, how they responded to combat stress. The details that distinguish firsthand depiction from researched depiction appear throughout the film. Later Vietnam productions including We Were Soldiers (2002) and others have included veteran consultation. Platoon represents direct veteran authorship of the material. The authority can’t be reproduced through consultation alone.

The Barnes-Elias Conflict

Staff Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias represent opposed moral approaches to combat command. Barnes works with ruthless violence including ordering questionable shootings, threatening fellow soldiers, and eventually murdering Elias to prevent his testimony about war crimes.

Elias works with humanity that recognizes the costs combat exacts on both American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians. The conflict between the two NCOs structures Taylor’s moral education across the runtime.

The opposition has been criticized as too schematic, and this is my one real reservation.

Some readings treat Barnes and Elias as devil and angel, while others argue Stone saw that kind of extreme contrast firsthand, and both have support in the film. I land in the middle. The clarity works dramatically, and Berenger and Dafoe are so strong that I believe them anyway, but I’d have liked one moment where Elias gets something wrong.

The Village Sequence

The platoon enters a Vietnamese village searching for Vietcong activity. This operation escalates as soldiers find weapons hidden in food supplies. Some soldiers begin executing villagers. Elias intervenes to stop the killing. Barnes attempts to escalate further. Taylor stops Bunny from raping a young girl. This sequence captures the brutality of the My Lai incident without literal reproduction.

The village sequence is the hardest stretch of the film for me to watch, and I think it’s the most important. Taylor stopping Bunny is the moment the whole picture turns on, the point where a frightened young soldier decides what kind of man he’s going to be.

The village sequence gives the war film material that conventional combat-focused production typically avoids.

Most war films emphasize firefights between opposing armies. Platoon emphasizes the violence American soldiers committed against Vietnamese civilians. The material reflects historical realities that later investigations including the Winter Soldier Investigation documented. Stone’s decision to address this material directly distinguished Platoon from earlier Vietnam productions that had typically minimized or omitted civilian violence.

Is Platoon as good as people say?

Platoon gets its 9 because it’s the first major Vietnam film made by a man who fought there, and I feel that authority in every scene.

The Barnes-Elias conflict is sometimes too clean for my taste, and that’s the only thing keeping it from a 10. The village sequence faces the civilian violence that earlier Vietnam films dodged, and it turns my stomach. See it if you care about war films at all.

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