Platoon (1986)
Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 49
Fresh: 43 | Rotten: 6
Informed by director Oliver Stone's personal experiences in Vietnam, Platoon forgoes easy sermonizing in favor of a harrowing, ground-level view of war, bolstered by no-holds-barred performances from Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 13
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 3
Informed by director Oliver Stone's personal experiences in Vietnam, Platoon forgoes easy sermonizing in favor of a harrowing, ground-level view of war, bolstered by no-holds-barred performances from Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 210,156
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Movie Info
Oliver Stone's breakthrough as a director, Platoon is a brutally realistic look at a young soldier's tour of duty in Vietnam. Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is a college student who quits school to volunteer for the Army in the late '60s. He's shipped off to Vietnam, where he serves with a culturally diverse group of fellow soldiers under two men who lead the platoon: Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger), whose facial scars are a mirror of the violence and corruption of his soul, and Sgt. Elias (Willem
Dec 24, 1986 Wide
Dec 9, 1997
Orion Pictures
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Cast
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Tom Berenger
Sgt. Barnes -
Willem Dafoe
Sgt. Elias Grodin -
Charlie Sheen
Chris Taylor -
Forest Whitaker
Big Harold -
Francesco Quinn
Rhah -
Kevin Dillon
Bunny -
Richard Edson
Sal -
John C. McGinley
Sgt. O'Neill -
Reggie Johnson
Junior -
Keith David
King -
Johnny Depp
Lerner -
David Neidorf
Tex -
Andrew B. Clark
Tubbs -
Kevin Eshelman
Morehouse -
Corey Glover
Francis -
Ivan Kane
Tony -
Bernardo Manalili
Village Chief -
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Warren McLean
Mechanized Soldier #2 -
Mark Moses
Lt. Wolfe -
Clarisa Ortacio
Old Woman -
Bob Orwig
Gardner -
Chris Pederson
Crawford -
Than Rogers
Village Chief's Wife -
Paul Sanchez
Doc -
Romy Sevilla
One-Legged Man -
Li Mai Thao
Rape Victim -
Tony Todd
Warren -
Li Thi Van
Village Chief's Daughte... -
Matthew Westfall
Terrified Soldier -
Dale Dye
Capt. Harris -
Oliver Stone
Officer in Bunker -
Basile Achara
Flash -
Ron Barracks
Medic -
Steve Barredo
Fu Sheng -
Chris Castillejo
Rodriguez -
Adam J. Glover
Sanderson -
Peter Hicks
Parker -
Corkey Ford
Manny -
Nick Nicholson
Mechanized Soldier -
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Platoon Trailer & Photos
All Critics (49) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (52) | Rotten (6) | DVD (34)
This is movie-making with a zealot's fervor.
Top CriticPlatoon is filled with one fine performance after another, and one can only wish that every person who saw the cartoonish war fantasy that was Rambo would buy a ticket to Platoon and bear witness to something closer to the truth.
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.
Stone's eye-blistering images possess an awesome power, which sets the senses reeling and leaves the mind disturbed.
The grisly reality is brought to life by Stone's dialogue and emotion-charged combat scenes, raising thought-provoking questions of morality in this still-resonant classic.
Vietnam seems to have made [Stone] a better filmmaker -- his next movies should tell us whether, in the best war-movie tradition, it's also made a man out of him.
Stone, who's known for his excess, offers a few voiceover lines that border on the cheesy, but other than that it's a pretty straightforward realistic tour of duty. And that's what makes it so powerful.
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.
... 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.
Audience Reviews for Platoon
Super Reviewer
"The first casualty of war is innocence."
Platoon, often cited as one of the best and most realistic war films ever made, is a stunning and sobering movie about Vietnam. Oliver Stone brings this film to the screen with an extreme amount of power. He explores the war on many levels. It isn't just us vs. them, but us vs. us. There's senseless killing, drug use, rape, and all of it is viewed from the point of view of the soldiers. The movie is, at times, hard to watch. It's graphic, it's gritty, it's real. It gives you a little taste of the hell that was Vietnam.
Taylor is a new arrival to the war. New arrivals basically get shit upon. You have to earn the respect of your fellow soldiers by putting your time in. Taylor wasn't drafted, but voluntarily went because his grandfather and father both fought in wars. He falls under the guidance of a good leader in Sgt. Elias. There's a lot of inner fighting between the platoon as some side with the vicious Sgt. Barnes, who has no qualms with killing civilians, and some side with Elias. The battle sequences are as intense as you'd expect and we see characters transformed through these battles into killing machines.
The movie looks amazing, but it also sounds equally amazing. There's also an amazing all-star cast bringing everything to life. Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, John C. McGinley, Forest Whitaker, and Johnny Depp are the biggest names, but the rest of the huge cast give great performances as well. Through the great performances, the audience deals with a ranging amount of emotions. The movie is at times terrifying, at times sad, at times infuriating, and even at times funny and heartfelt.
There's a reason this movie is regarded as the classic it is, and after watching it you'll understand. This is one of Stone's very best movies and one that will never lose a touch of its power. Fifty years from now, this movie will still be every bit as powerful. This is a must see for everyone. It doesn't matter if you don't like war films, or you don't like Charlie Sheen, or you don't like Oliver Stone. It should be required viewing.
Super Reviewer
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- Chris Taylor: Hell is the impossibility of reason.
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- Chris Taylor: She's a fucking human being, man! Fuck you!
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- Chris Taylor: Somebody once wrote: 'Hell is the impossibility of reason.' That's what this place feels like. Hell.
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- Chris Taylor: I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy... was in us.
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- Chris Taylor: Most come from the end of the line--small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennesse;. Brandon, Mississipp;. Pork Bend, Utah; Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years' high school's about it. If they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. Most have got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it? At the bottom of the barrel, and they know it. Maybe that's why they call themselves 'grunts', 'cause a grunt can take it--can take anything.
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- Sgt. Barnes: Death? What do you know about death?
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