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Incident to incident. Snake slithering around foot. Lizard crawling on head of stone. Smoke against foliage against blood against the deepest cries of anguish. Screams in the dark. Flares and claymores. An environment and a moment in history which will not and cannot be explained to us. One of the few narrative war films that not only doesn't apologize for its slaughter (the Vietcong aren't simply Otherized, in addition abstracted among nature's wrath - humans retaliating because they need to), but doesn't offer the tools to comprehend the images laid out in silent, foreboding succession. Why should it? Vietnam happened. America let it happen. We're lucky Oliver Stone could display such a coherent political framework within the infantry depiction…

“I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy was in us.”

If all war films were as good and sincere as Platoon it would probably be one of my favorite genres, but there are very few exceptions where the material is treated right as most directors tend to either be incredibly biased debating either in favor or against the war. It’s strange I make this claim since Platoon is obviously an anti-war film, but it treats the material with an honesty you don’t find in other films of the genre. It is much easier to make a statement like this in a war that everyone considers was a terrible mistake to…

Platoon is a 1986 war film written and directed by Oliver Stone and stars a packed cast that includes the likes of Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Keith David, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Forest Whitaker and Johnny Depp. The film is based on Stone's own experiences from the war and follows a U.S. Army volunteer serving in Vietnam while his Platoon Sergeant and his Squad Leader argue over the morality in the platoon and the conduct of the war.

“Somebody once wrote: 'Hell is the impossibility of reason.' That's what this place feels like. Hell.”- Private Chris Taylor. 

It’s film club time once again and this time it was my turn to pick. Having never seen Platoon I…

An excellent depiction of the boots on the ground soldier experience of being 'in the shit' of the Vietnam War.

"What happened today was just the beginning. We're gonna lose this war ... Come on. You really think so? Us? ... We been kicking other people’s asses for so long, I figured it's time we got ours kicked."

Having grown up as a ‘G.I. Joes’ fan 80s kid, I always enjoyed watching action-packed war movies. So now revisiting these movies as an adult, it is staggering to experience them again with the perspective of how truly awful war is. You will often hear people comparing Platoon to Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket', and because of that rivalry growing up I always…

The Vietnam war has never been painted with such a distressing brush. Platoon's examination of brutality and duality is unflinching, stark, scathing and more insightful than most adaptations of this tumultuous conflict. Leaping head first into turbulent jungles and disharmonized divisions, Oliver Stone's magnum opus challenges any existing glorification of warfare, insisting that all do not flee from its horrors. Those who die, perish in excruciation, but those who escape are perpetually scarred with the memories of such pandemonium and horror. War shapes and haunts the soldiers eternity, and Platoon supports this with the utmost fervour and virtuosity.

We, along side Chris Taylor, are thrust into the putrid barracks of the 25th Infantry Division - with Adagio for Strings playing…

Beyond setting a great deal of the template for how movies would look at this conflict going forward or being a reportedly excruciatingly faithful recreation of "what it was really like", this manages to touch on so many slivers of context. Race and socioeconomic pressures on the grunts back home and in military heirarchy, intelligence and administrative failures, nuts-and-bolts technical stuff, on and on. Often further evidence of Stone's widely humanist intentions, too. What tends to be dismissed as a lack of subtlety is often an attempt to articulate the broadest possible experience. This time it even kind of reminded me of Sade's "Justine"*, aka "The Misfortunes of Virtue". Not taking pleasure in the torture but understanding it on the…

It's no Apocalypse Now, but this is easily the 2nd best Vietnam film I've seen. This film is just 2 hours of brutal honesty, no holds barred. It takes a very unbiased stance, in that no matter who you were or where you were from, you suffered in Vietnam. And the last line in the film is the last nail in the coffin, succinctly tells you what Stone is trying to get across here: they weren't fighting communists, they were fighting for their souls. And we lost that battle. The acting, with the exception of a couple lines said from side characters that I felt weren't delivered all that naturally, is exceptional, with Dafoe being my favorite part. It did…