**** (out of ****)
Starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, John C. McGinley, Kevin Dillon, Forrest Whitaker, Tony Todd, and Johnny Depp
Directed & written by Oliver Stone
1986
120 min R
The evidence of Oliver Stone’s power as a filmmaker is his ubiquity. He has become literally synonymous with assassination conspiracies because of “JFK.” “Wall Street,” with its fireworks Michael Douglas performance, crystallizes so many fears of capitalism gone rampant. And even if you haven’t seen “Platoon,” you know many of its images, copied, parodied, or otherwise filtered through other films and media. Even if it seems a little cranky or rough around the edges now, “Platoon” is still powerful, and still the definitive “realistic” movie about the grunt’s-eye-view of Vietnam. (“Realistic” as opposed to the open surrealism of “Apocalypse Now.”)
What imagery! The cigarettes. The marijuana. The helicopters. The murder. Stone violates the “180 degree rule” throughout “Platoon,” so that firefights seem to be in all directions at once. Soldiers of both sides are swallowed by the jungle. American soldiers eat, sleep, and breathe in constant fear of a shadowy, faceless enemy that is never more than a ghost. We see insects crawling and biting over skin that backpacks keep men from reaching. There is sweat everywhere, dripping and sticky in the humidity. Days are spent digging holes and nights are lit with gunfire. Sweaty men, trapped beneath rifles and noisy gear, spend hours in dread, only to be relieved by spurts of violence. To maintain their individuality in the face of continual awfulness, the weaker personalities assume tough guy clichés.
The biggest criticism against “Platoon” is that the story Stone tells clashes with the realism he displays elsewhere. A first viewing of “Platoon” might leave you so awed by its brutal starkness that you might not notice the melodrama. I didn’t notice it the first time I watched “Platoon” six years ago. Many critics when the movie was first released overlooked it as well. What Stone is trying to do is show the internal struggle within every soldier. What we like about Stone is how he sees value in both sides, not in a timid, centrist way, but sincerely. Like “Wall Street,” “Platoon” is the story of a man torn between two fathers: the cold pragmatist and the thwarted idealist. Like “Wall Street,” the torn young man is Charlie Sheen, vague, blank, almost teenage in his unformed character.
The two fathers are Tom Berenger, the platoon staff sergeant, and Willem Dafoe, his squad leader. One is a battle-scarred, a true warrior who will remorselessly get the job done, fair to both his troops and the enemy in that he will kill either who gets in his way. The other is saintly, kind, philosophical, providing an encouraging word for the stumbling new guys. Which is which? I’ll give you a hint: one of them played Jesus in “The Last Temptation of Christ.” They are joined by a pantheon of familiar faces in early performances. Forest Whitaker, John C. McGinley, and even a barely recognizable Johnny Depp show up, just to name a few.
We follow Sheen as he enters the jungle as the newest member of his platoon. Together they fight battles that seem to serve no purpose. He struggles to maintain his humanity while at the same time terrorizing innocent villagers to exact retribution for dead Americans. The politics of the platoon—the clash of the strong personalities—comes to a head in nocturnal assault in which the sky catches on fire. I will not describe the final retribution except to ask: which of Sheen’s two fathers is he imitating? It may be satisfying, in fact extremely satisfying, to watch hyper-militaristic “do-not-pity-the-weak” macho bullshit finally get what it deserves. But notice that the recipient of this vengeance is also weak and so disgusted by his own weakness that he approves of what is done to him. Sheen may, in effect, be paying lip service to one father, but is accepting the torch of the other.
More noticeable now than in 1986 is how Sheen’s narration—in letters to his grandmother—is a little excessive, in places even redundant. In many ways the three leads and their strife are like this narration: they exist somewhat outside the movie, detached from it, and are examining the plight of the real soldiers. Whether it was intentional or not, Stone color-codes this separation: Sheen’s soldier is a white, middle-class volunteer for the infantry, a rarity among all the poor black, white, and Latino kids who couldn’t afford to escape the draft. Dafoe and Berenger are also white; while they are at once in the dirt and grime of the battle, the skin difference between them, so many of their fellow soldiers, and their enemies, suggests something of comfort and distance between them and the fighting. Sheen uses his blankness to his advantage: like so many privileged white kids, a stint in the military is the first time he was ever really gotten to know any poor people or minorities, and his transition from nervousness to sincere acceptance is touching.
The separation between imagery, narration, and internal struggle is reminiscent of Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” 12 years later. The narration in “The Thin Red Line” is so abstract from what we’re seeing that many audiences were bothered by it. It is not at all redundant and doesn’t waste any time telling us what we could learn from the images. That’s another review. Anyway, Stone’s goal, unlike Malick’s, is to reach a large audience, and he succeeds. The other similarity between “Platoon” and “Line” is that the Christ figures from both movies went on to play Christ.
“Platoon” won Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Sound, and Film Editing, as well as supporting actor nominations for both Dafoe and Berenger. Nearly 20 years later, the most popular American film of 1986—the one that has aged well, is talked about most, and more people have seen—might no longer be “Platoon” but is probably “Aliens,” which won the Oscar for Visual Effects. Both films have been copied beyond count. It’s interesting to note the similarities between the two of them, both about presumptuous, heavily-armed Americans facing an invisible, unknown presence that they would rather kill than understand (James Cameron wrote “Aliens” with Vietnam in mind). But that’s also another review.
Finished Monday, June 6th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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