Platoon (film)

This article is about the Vietnam War film. For other meanings, see Platoon (disambiguation).

Platoon
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Oliver Stone
Written by	Oliver Stone
Produced by	Arnold Kopelson
Starring	Charlie Sheen Tom Berenger Willem Dafoe Forest Whitaker John C. McGinley Mark Moses Kevin Dillon Tony Todd
Cinematography	Robert Richardson
Edited by	Claire Simpson
Distributed by	Orion Pictures
Release date	December 19 1986
Running time	120 min.
Country	United States
Languages	English Vietnamese
Budget	$6.5 million
Box office	$136 million

Platoon is a 1986 Vietnam war film written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon, Keith David, John C. McGinley, and Johnny Depp. The story is drawn from Stone's experiences as a US Infantryman in Vietnam and was written by him upon his return as a counter to the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne's The Green Berets. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1987. In 2007, the American Film Institute placed Platoon at #86 in their 100 Years...100 Movies poll. Channel 4 voted Platoon as the 6th greatest war film ever made, behind Full Metal Jacket and ahead of A Bridge Too Far.

Plot

US Army soldier, Private Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is a young, naive American who gives up college and volunteers for combat in Vietnam. Along with several other replacements, Taylor joins an experienced rifle platoon that has suffered losses in recent combat operations. His enthusiasm quickly evaporates as he goes on continual patrols and, as a "new guy", is assigned to dig foxholes and perform other arduous tasks. On his first night on patrol, his unit is set upon by a squad of North Vietnamese Army troops after the soldier meant to be on guard duty (Junior) falls asleep. In the subsequent fire fight, one soldier is killed and another maimed by a grenade thrown by Sergeant Red O'Neil (John C. McGinley). Taylor receives a graze to his neck, and Junior shirks all responsibility, telling the platoon that Taylor was on guard duty.

As Taylor recovers from his wound—a rite of passage that grants him greater social contact with the platoon—he is introduced to the "Underworld", a bunker on the American base which has been converted into a pseudo-nightclub, where beer is available and marijuana and opium are smoked. After returning to field duty, Taylor sees more combat and during another patrol, an empty bunker complex is discovered. During the examination of the bunker, two of the platoon are killed by a booby trap. Upon leaving the area, the rest of the platoon encounter another member of their unit, who has been snatched from his guard duty, tied to a post, and mutilated.

The platoon reaches a nearby village, where it discovers a food and weapons cache. The villagers insist the Viet Cong forced them to hide the cache. Led by Staff Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), some of the platoon take out their frustration and anger at the deaths of their comrades on the villagers. A young soldier, Bunny (Kevin Dillon), beats a disabled boy and his mother to death with his shotgun's butt, and several more are killed. The platoon burns the village and leaves, while Taylor prevents the gang-rape of a teenage girl by three other members of the platoon. Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), having witnessed Barnes' actions, reports him to their company commander, Captain Harris (Dale Dye). Taylor, having originally admired Barnes, now finds his loyalties leaning towards Elias, while Barnes' supporters talk of killing Elias to prevent him from giving testimony about the illegal killings. Taylor speaks of this as "a civil war in the platoon. Half with Elias, half with Barnes."

During another patrol, the platoon is ambushed. As the platoon suffers losses, Lieutenant Wolfe (Mark Moses) calls friendly artillery fire down on his own men. Elias, with Taylor and two other soldiers, attempts to intercept flanking North Vietnamese Army troops. During the fire fight, Barnes orders the platoon to fall back, leaving Elias unsupported. While the remainder of the platoon retreats to its landing zone to be airlifted from the area, Barnes goes back into the jungle, citing a desire to retrieve Elias' group. Finding Taylor and the two soldiers, Barnes orders them back to the landing zone and goes to find Elias. Instead, he ambushes and shoots Elias.

Barnes returns to the landing zone, telling Taylor that Elias is dead. As the helicopter takes off, the platoon sees a badly-wounded Elias running from the jungle towards the zone, the North Vietnamese Army in pursuit. As the helicopters fly overhead, he dies in a field after being shot several more times by the North Vietnamese Army. Upon their return to base, Taylor begins to suspect that Barnes caused Elias' death and talks of killing him in retaliation, leading to a confrontation between the two. The platoon is sent back to the ambush area and builds defensive positions to bait the North Vietnamese Army. A battle occurs, which ends with the obliteration of almost the entire platoon after a US aerial napalm attack.

Taylor regains consciousness the next morning, finding himself wounded and surrounded by bodies. Eventually he finds Barnes, who is also wounded. Taylor trains a rifle on Barnes, who goads Taylor, daring him to pull the trigger. Taylor shoots Barnes three times in the chest, killing him. Taylor collapses and awaits medical attention. He and the other survivors are airlifted from the battlefield.

Development

After his tour of duty in Vietnam ended in 1968, Stone wrote a screenplay called Break: a semi-autobiographical account detailing his experiences with his parents and his time in Vietnam. It featured several characters who were the seeds of those who would end up in Platoon. The script was set to music from The Doors; Stone sent the script to Jim Morrison in the hope he would play the lead (Morrison never responded). Stone's return from Vietnam led into a "big change" in how he viewed life and the war: "Vietnam was really visceral, and I had come from a cerebral existence: study... working with a pen and paper, with ideas. I came back really visceral. And I think the camera is so much more... that's your interpreter, as opposed to a pen." Though Break went ultimately unproduced, it was the spur for him to attend film school.

After penning several other produced screenplays in the early 1970s, Stone came to work with Robert Bolt on an unproduced screenplay, The Cover-up. Bolt's rigorous approach rubbed off on Stone, and he was inspired to use the characters from his Break screenplay (who in turn were based upon people Stone knew in Vietnam) as the basis for a new screenplay titled The Platoon. Producer Martin Bregman attempted to elicit studio interest in the project, but Hollywood was still apathetic about Vietnam. However, the strength of Stone's writing on The Platoon was enough to get him the job penning Midnight Express in 1978. Despite that film's critical and commercial success, and that of other Stone-penned films at the time, most studios were still reluctant to finance The Platoon, as they feared a film about the Vietnam War would not attract an audience. After the release of The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979), they then cited the perception that these films were considered the pinnacle of the Vietnam War film genre as reasons not to make The Platoon.

Stone instead attempted to break into mainstream direction via the easier-to-finance horror genre, but The Hand (1981) failed at the box office, and Stone began to think that The Platoon would never be made. Stone wrote Year of the Dragon (1985) for a lower-than-usual fee of $200,000, on the condition from producer Dino de Laurentiis that he would then produce The Platoon. De Laurentiis secured financing for the film, but struggled to find a distributor. Because de Laurentiis had already spent money sending Stone to the Philippines to scout for locations, he decided to keep control of the film's script until he was repaid. Then Stone's script for what would become Salvador (1986) was passed to John Daly of British production company Hemdale. Once again, this was a project that Stone had struggled to secure financing for, but Daly loved the script and was prepared to finance both Salvador and The Platoon off the back of it. Stone shot Salvador first, before turning his attention to what was by now called Platoon.

Production

File:Platoon greenspon.jpg

The famous scene depicting Elias with his hands in the air is a recreation of a 1968 photograph by Art Greenspon.

Platoon was filmed on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, starting in February 1986. The production of the film on a scheduled date was almost canceled due to the political upheaval in the country with then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos, but with the help of a producer well-known in Asia, Mark Hill, the shoot went on as scheduled. The shoot lasted 54 days and cost $6.5 million. The production made a deal with the Philippine military for the use of military equipment.

James Woods, who had starred in Stone's previous film, Salvador, was offered a part in Platoon. He turned the role down, later saying he "couldn't face going into another jungle with [Stone]". Upon arrival in the Philippines, the cast was sent on a two-week intensive training course, during which they had to dig foxholes and were subject to forced marches and night-time "ambushes" which utilized special-effects explosions. Stone explained that he was trying to break them down, "to fuck with their heads so we could get that dog-tired, don't give a damn attitude, the anger, the irritation... the casual approach to death".

Stone makes a cameo appearance as the battalion commander in the final battle. Dale Dye, who played company commander Captain Harris, is a U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam veteran who also acted as the film's technical advisor.

Music used in the film includes Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard, and Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival. During a scene in the "Underworld" the soldiers sing along to The Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.

Reception

Critics both praised and criticized Platoon for its presentation of the violence seen in the war and the moral ambiguity created by the realities of Guerrilla warfare, when unit leaders have to make a choice between saving the lives of their own men and taking those of suspected Guerrilla sympathizers.

It shows some US soldiers as violent and indiscriminate killers. Fueled by rage at seeing their friends killed and maimed by booby traps, they take their anger out on villagers who were found hiding a cache of firearms, killing and torturing Vietnamese villagers and setting their village on fire. The film has been banned in Vietnam mostly due to these scenes and the negative and arguably condescending portrayal of the Vietnamese.

The film currently has an 88% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 86%

Platoon's release was timely. During the mid-1980s there was a softening of attitudes towards Vietnam veterans (which had taken over ten years, since the last American soldiers pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. Saigon fell in 1975).Sparked by the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, DC, in 1982, Hollywood suddenly saw a small surge in films related to the war.

Awards and nominations

• Winner of 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound.
• Nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tom Berenger), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Willem Dafoe), Best Cinematography and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Marketing

Several licensed tie-ins were released between 1986-1988. A video game was produced by Ocean Software for various formats. The Nintendo Entertainment System version was ported and published by Sunsoft. Loosely based on the film, the object of the game is to survive in the Vietnamese jungle against guerrilla attacks. A wargame was also produced, by Avalon Hill, as an introductory game to attract young people into to the wargaming hobby, and a board game was also produced. The novelization of the film was written by Dale Dye.

See also

• The Deer Hunter
• The Anderson Platoon
• Tour of Duty

External links

• Platoon at IMDb
• Template:Amg movie
• Platoon at Box Office Mojo
• Platoon at Rotten Tomatoes

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