Platoon

B

#86 on AFI’s List of Top 100

I am just a couple of weeks behind the podcast ‘Unspooled’ where Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson talk about AFI’s list of top 100 movies.  Episode 9 is on Platoon.  It seemed to me Paul enjoyed it and Amy did not.  Platoon is probably a guy’s movie but I think it earns its place on the list and is definitely better than Amy’s reactions would indicate.   

Platoon is a Vietnam War movie released in 1986.  Directed by Oliver Stone, it is the story of a group of men dropped into the Vietnamese jungle and told, on a number of occasions, to ‘kill anything that moves’.  Listening to ‘Unspooled’ I learned that Oliver Stone was a Vietnam War veteran.  That fact gives the film more credibility in my mind as I understand the creative impulse to show what really happened.  At least how it appeared to you at the time.

I am generally not a huge war movie person.  However, I watched Platoon back in the early 00′s when my older son was a teenager and my younger son was in grade school.  This was a movie they would have chosen to watch and watching movies is something the three of us have always enjoyed doing together.  At that time, I still had two minor children at home and I watched Platoon with my boys knowing that they would be required to register for the draft when they turned 18.  It made me feel sick.  I didn’t like it.  That is not to say the movie was bad but the narrative was very difficult for me to watch.  Now - a million years later - I have a son who is in the army by choice.  Nothing in his life has made him happier than his service to his country.  So I watched Platoon again curious to see if it would affect me in the same way.  It did and it didn’t.  I have profound respect for my son’s choice to serve.  However, I did take the story of the soldiers more personally, as though each one was my son, so I was more emotionally invested in the movie than I was the first time watching.

There are insects, drugs, music, killing, dying and all of it laid on with Oliver Stone’s thick paintbrush.  His style is such to make sure you don’t miss the point.  Amy said the music was too obvious.  I thought it was perfect.  Those songs were constructs of that era.  When you hear Grace Slick alongside Conway Twitty that tells you what was happening in America during the 60′s.  There were still plenty of people who thought smoking marijuana was the same as shooting heroin and that disparity of personalities would have been an element in how these guys worked together as a military unit.  

Amy also mentioned that Willem Dafoe’s character was overdone.  She may not have used that word but she mentioned his over-dramatized characterization a few times.  I have to say his part in this movie - from the early 00′s to now - is my favorite part.  He is the only good guy in the whole picture.  His character gives me something to hold on to.  Something to hope for.  I never forgot the scene where he is running in the jungle as the helicopter flies away.  I find it moving and dramatic then and now.

However, Stone’s characters are very two-dimensional.  We move over to the bad guy, played by Tom Berenger.  He is a proper scar-faced villain akin to Snidely Whiplash but without the humor.  Stone hits you in the face with good guy and bad guy leaving no room for interpretation.

Charlie Sheen is the lead although not top billed in the opening credits.  I could have done without him altogether but I think that feeling is clouded by his later antics in his personal life.  Winning!  When I watched Platoon originally I don’t remember feeling any particular way about him.  One thing Amy did mention that I do agree with is the narration in Charlie’s voice as he writes letters to his grandma describing his thoughts and experiences of the war.  She said it was too much.  My question is - why would a soldier write letters like that to his grandma?  What in the world would she do with that information?  Stone could have picked a better confidant for Sheen’s character to narrate to.

I just want to say one more thing about Platoon and its placement on the AFI list.  Paul and Amy mentioned that there are a number of Vietnam movies on the list but I noticed Full Metal Jacket is not one of them.  Now that’s a damn shame.  If I had to choose - I would choose Full Metal Jacket over Platoon in a heartbeat.  

So Amy and Paul - you also mentioned about the soldiers burning the food of the villagers - that scene is intense and hard to watch.  But burning crops is what you do in war (see Gone With the Wind) and they did mention that that village had too much food for that many people.  So they were raising food for the ‘enemy’ and that is not allowed in war.  That village scene was horrifying though - I agree.  I wonder what Stone’s true intention was when he wrote in that non-battle scene where all the guys just lose it.  If I had to guess I would say it is so that we, the viewers, can hear the message of why it was so hard to come back from the Vietnam War.  Why some men never came back. 

I’ll take up the last sentence for our enlisted and veteran military personnel.  

Thank you for your service.