The Vietnam War is an almost inexhaustible source of American cinema, with varying degrees of success. But Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” is undoubtedly among the very top of the basket. A masterpiece, which has become a landmark.
September 1967: Nineteen-year-old Chris Taylor joins Bravo Company, 25th Infantry Regiment, near the Cambodian border. Chris, from a bourgeois family, volunteered and, full of ideals, intends to serve his country well. But the reality is quite different and his illusions will fall one after the other. He will also witness the bloody rivalry between two officers he admires…
Engaged in Vietnam, Oliver Stone was forever marked by his experience of the conflict. It was in December 1969 that he had the idea of making Platoon. But no one wanted to produce his script, judged at the time “too hard, too dark and depressing”.
Innocence is the first victim of war
First film in a trilogy in the making dedicated to Vietnam with Born on the 4th of July then Between Heaven and Earth, a poignant and cruel initiation story staged with rare power and realism, Platoon is obviously worn by Charlie Sheen, but especially by Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe, absolutely exceptional in their incarnations of two completely opposite characters.
Stone’s -brilliant- idea was to have them play characters that were the opposite of what these two actors had been used to playing until then. Exit the roles of sympathetic characters for Berenger, and make way for the psychopathic Sergeant Barnes, with his face stitched with scars.
Conversely, Willem Dafoe, accustomed to playing bastard roles (the last one just before being the big bad of the Los Angeles Federal Police) plays on the contrary the benevolent and humane Sergeant Elias.
Orion Pictures
Crowned with four Oscars including Best Film and Best Director, Platoon remains, 38 years after its release (which attracted nearly 3 million spectators in France), one of the best war films ever made. But also one of the best ever devoted to the Vietnam War, an inexhaustible source of American cinema.
It will also pull the rug out from under the feet of Stanley Kubrick who will release Full Metal Jacket a year later, and will suffer at the time from comparison with his predecessor. It took a few years before it legitimately rose to the rank of masterpiece and cult film.
But, unlike Platoon, Kubrick’s film aims more at a semi-documentary and mental approach to the conflict. In any case, the two are perfectly complementary. And absolutely essential.