Platoon - 1986
In the past few days, I’ve taken myself on a little 80’s war film odyssey. I began with the great Full Metal Jacket. Then came Oliver Stone’s Platoon and finally Klimov’s total soul punch, Come and See. Each picture has its merits. I’ve gone into them in detail elsewhere. Here I have to talk about what I feel is the most clear down the middle fastball of the lot, and that is the one starring the unhinged Staff Sgt. with a face scar. Yes, Platoon is about what you think of when you ruminate on Vietnam War flicks, for better or worse.
In regards to the former, well this is an Oliver Stone production in the late 80’s. That means a couple of things will be automatic - a large cast of A-list stars and up-and-comers, for starters. How about darn near on-location shooting? (The Philippines at least get us in SE Asia. Kubrick shot all of Jacketin England). There is great big-tent action sequences and some solid capital C character arcs. The writing is competent, the direction sound. This was helmed by a Vietnam vet himself, after all (in case you missed pretty much all of the director’s interviews in the past 30 years). Platoon does that self-contradictory thing in anti-war flicks where it shows how pointless and absurd all this is by making a series of actually very entertaining scenes. An anti-war film for the masses.
And yes some of the battle sequences are remarkable. Stone’s eye is obviously made for this kind of thing. Moreover, the scene in the village is among the best war sequences in any war picture anywhere. It is in that moment when the particular and universal themes Stone is driving so hard at finally share a harrowing embrace.
Beyond this, I think the greatest strength of the picture lies in the way that it utilizes its chief archetypes. Berenger may have received many of the plaudits, but for my money Willem Dafoe is the soul of the picture. Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor is enough of a tabula rasa for both these men to paint with their broad brushes. Stone’s picture is thematically built, like so many of the era, around the duality of humankind. Barnes is the wayward soul, the hard-nosed pragmatist who gets the job done no matter what the cost. No matter the questionable morality at the center of his methodology, or sometimes as the very antithesis of ethical behavior. Dafoe’s Sgt. Elias, by contrast, is the freer spirit (or at least one determined to drift towards the light). The pot-smoking guru of peace and love seeing the humanity in the carnage.
And so these men represent the internal war of the newbie. Sheen is about as solid a blank canvas as you’ll find (this is probably properly read as both a compliment and dig). The scenes that follow drive Stone’s oft-recurring theme home: This is all an exercise in inanity. War will destroy the heart of a man.
The trouble for me is the plot beats and character motives are SO rote that Platoon never really rises above an average picture. It is certainly not one deserving of Best Picture, in my estimation. I, for one, am captivated by war stories which draw us into the personal life of their protagonists. Messaging built around the horror and pointlessness of war just stick much better when this kind of character identification takes place. Unfortunately, in going big and broad, Stone never quite gets me there this time around.
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