All Critics (45)
|
Top Critics (10)
|
Fresh (47)
|
Rotten (6)
|
DVD (34)
Platoon is different. It matters.
The artistic veneer Stone applies, along with the simpy narration provided for Sheen in the way of letters to his grandmother, detract significantly from the work's immediacy.
For all the purported naturalism, the film seems resolutely schematic, and the attitudes shaping the drama are far from open-ended.
Possibly the best work of any kind about the Vietnam War since Michael Herr's vigorous and hallucinatory book 'Dispatches.
Platoon is one of those movies that, once seen, will never be forgotten, and, at least for those who were not in Vietnam, will forever alter the way in which the war is considered.
I know that Platoon is being acclaimed for its realism, and I expect to be chastened for being a woman finding fault with a war film. But I've probably seen as much combat as most of the men saying, 'This is how war is.'
MGM has backed their impressive transfer of Oliver Stone's masterwork with an abundance of extras that prove both entertaining and all-encompassing.
Remains an intriguing blend of the political and the personal, with Stone turning his memories and his opinions about Vietnam into potent drama. [Blu-ray]
No war movie is truly an anti-war movie, but PLATOON comes close, and it's still as powerful as it was decades ago.
The first and best of Stone's Vietnam trilogy, it's also one of his finest pieces of work.
Most war films adhere to a big-picture purview, explaining which battles meant what and fulfilled which strategic objectives. Stone's effort skirts all that in favor of wrapping the viewer in visceral detail.
A terrific film from a filmmaker long absent from his art, Platoon is a frightening and challenging look into the battlefield operations of Vietnam.
Stone's eye-blistering images possess an awesome power, which sets the senses reeling and leaves the mind disturbed.
... excellent ... elegiac and poetry-stuffed
Captures the experience of Vietnam most accurately and realistically, while also managing to forge a modern fable about good and evil, and the ultimate powerlessness of individuals.
Mixing realistic reportage of combat with more conventional morality play (the narrative strategy of all his films), Stone employs the two sergeants (Berenger and Dafoe) as realistic soldiers as well as broader symbols of Good and Evil.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
