Best War Movies: 1. Platoon

10 October 2008

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So here we are at the top of our chart for the search for the best war movie and taking that top spot is Oliver Stone's 1986 Academy Award Best Picture winning Vietnam picture Platoon.

Director Oliver Stone draws on his harrowing experiences in Vietnam as he wrote and directed this insight into brutality of guerrilla warfare in the heat of the jungle.

It is also the first of Stone's Vietnam War trilogy, followed by Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven & Earth (1993).

Charlie Sheen stars as Chris, a raw recruit, or "new meat," who also serves as the film's narrator, it was the actor's first major role.

Actor Charlie Sheen who landed the role as Chris launched his career with this role as we see the war through his somewhat innocent eyes. At first he wilts under the rigorous conditions of jungle life, freezes up in a fire fight, and wonders whether he'll be able to survive.

But he gradually adapts and, as time goes by, begins to see that the platoon is divided into two groups.

One consists of lifers, juicers, and sub-intelligent whites, the other of blacks and heads. Sgt. Barnes, a combat-loving burnout (Tom Berenger), is the informal leader of the lifers, and Sgt. Elias, a free spirit (Willem Dafoe), leads the latter group.

When the platoon takes some gruesome losses, an enraged Barnes kills some Vietnamese and orders the burning of their village, outraging the temporarily absent Elias. As the conflict between these two reaches its tragic climax, Chris must decide what he really values.

Platoon is an unsympathetic film it doesn't gloss over the troubles in Vietnam to suit and American cinema going audience. Stone depicts some soldiers as violent killers who struggle with seeing their friends injured and killed and take out their rage on a nearby village.

The village scene is perhaps one of the most harrowing of the entire film as American soldiers, struggling with their anger, kill, torture and rape Vietnamese villagers.

Stone also showed controversial issues within the U.S. army such as drug abuse, which has largely been speculated upon in recent years, the bullying behaviour by more experienced soldiers on the new, inexperienced recruits and the killing of unpopular officers.

Despite being banned in Vietnam the film received both praise and criticism but it went on to be nominated for a sting of Oscars.

The film won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Sound and was nominated for Best Actor for Tom Berenger, Supporting Actor for Willem Dafoe Best Cinematography and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Since it's release Platoon has widely become to be regarded as one of the finest war movies ever brought to the big screen taking the audience there and showing them the brutality of warfare and what soldiers lost and became to fight for their country.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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