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Platoon (Special Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 05 June, 2001 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $10.99 You SAVE: $3.99! Cast: Complete Cast (18 total) |
Platoon (Special Edition) Reviews
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Platoon, it records a story in the Vietnam War. Chris Taylor a young American soldier who is the main character of the movie, had arrived South Vietnam with his comrades. In the battlefield, it shows audiences a real battle life. Although the condition in the battlefront was bad, Taylor learned to fit in battle life, and he became an experienced soldier on the battlefront. In the scene when Taylor's leader Elias Grodin was killed by Viet soldiers, Taylor figured out Robert Barnes was the real murderer of Elias, and this scene is the cover of this movie. As the movie moves on, Taylor continued to fight with Viet soldiers and once, Taylor's company was losing because of the huge number of enemies. After bombing on the whole area, most of the soldiers died. Taylor was one of the survivals, and he found Barnes in the jungle. In the anger, he killed Barnes as what Barnes did to Elias. By the way, the newer version of Platoon has a better effect on the movie, even though it's still the same one. This movie is very compelling; it'll bring you to the world of war, a cruel, brutal and apathetic world. Again, welcome to the world of war!
Necessary as opposed to gratuitous
This review discusses the structure of the movie starting from the approach of a very important spoiler. Reader beware.
When I first saw this, I felt pretty disappointed in how a sense of the glory of war still seemed to have slipped its way into the mix through the character of Elias, played by Willem Dafoe. Somehow Dafoe's moralistic inner-strength and the way he can run into combat to kick butt without any support because, "Other people just slow me down," seemed incongruous with the overarching point of intensifying the destructive feelings of fear, stress, and anger felt during combat.
However, regarding Elias as a symbol of what the innocent people like Chris wanted to believe came out of war helps to reinforce the theme stated at the end of the movie: "We are in war against ourselves and our enemies are really within us." Sergeant Barnes' (Berenger) hidden execution of Elias shows the ultimate distruction of that romantic heroism from within rather than without.
It is from that point that the high levels of violence, bodies ripping apart, disturbing fights, and harrowing warfare surrounds itself to become more than just voyeuristic appraisal of the Vietnam War. Much has been said about Oliver Stone's involvement in the war and how this movie was created of his experiences, but I think it's important to point out that Stone's writing and directing is strong enough that his reputation as a veteran is not the only excuse for the disturbing and disgusting images of a film that has upon second-thought no inspection, but contains itself admirably as a parable for the state of American politics at the time. Sure his use of an almost all-black cast for Sgt. Elias' half of the troop and all-white cast (a good few with strong "hick" accents) for Sgt. Bob's half is a bit heavy-handed, but the point is still solid.
This is also probably a really good film to watch just to cast light on a lot of what happens in Stone's other films. Ultimately this is the only Stone film I've seen so far that I've felt comfortable calling a "Stone film" because of his strong and specific approach to it. Nothing in this seems as gratuitously extreme, only necessarily extreme.
--PolarisDiB
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