The Oscar project "Platoon"

[blue_lotus13]

The first time I started watching 1986's Platoon , I fell asleep. That was last year. This year, I actually appreciated this movie. It's the story of a young recruit, and the horrors of war, but what really made this film is the quality of the acting. Charlie Sheen is great as the young recruit and Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger give strong performances as his sargeants. Other cast members include Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon and Johnny Depp. I actually googled Kevin Dillon afterward to find out what he'd been up to, as his performance in this film was quite good and I wanted to see if he was still working. I also found the race relations and the dynamics between the men in the Platoon to be interesting. There are many disturbing scenes in this movie, but I found the scene in the Cambodian village to be particularly disturbing for me personally.



The recruits showed some very poor judgement around the helicopter. One dude approaches the helicopter with his rifle over his head. This is a good way to cause an accident. They also approached the helicopter from behind, which is a big helicopter safety NO. In fact, our treeplanting boss has been known to tackle people who approached a helicopter from behind. Those blades can bend a long way, and the helicopter can jump backward.

I was amazed at how clean the recruits stayed during some of the battles. It was uncanny.

Also, Willem Dafoe had to be shot a billion times before he died.

The truth of the matter is, I don't particularly enjoy war movies. I know that there are people who do, but I am not one of them. Still, I'm glad that I saw this film.

Comments

[alexeye.livejournal.com]

see, but that just shows you how much of a badass willem dafoe is.

it also took me 2 viewings to appreciate platoon, partly because i am biased against oliver stone (and i don't really like war movies, either). i think stone is a misogynist, but platoon doesn't really have any actual female characters, so it doesn't bug me so much. i think stone's point of view is incredibly close to what he is attempting to depict, and there is a lot of very good acting.

[wasabi-poptart.livejournal.com]

What I remember most vividly about the movie is how Stone used music, particularly Barber's "Adagio for Strings." I remember wondering at the time if he was going to be the next Kubrick. That's pretty funny, now.