Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: SHEEN,CHARLIE
EAN: 9780792846468
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 079284646X
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: August 15, 2000
Running Time: 120 minutes
Sales Rank: 27801
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: December 24, 1986
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Emotional look at the war in Vietnam, seen through the eyes of a young man who discovers that the Viet Cong are not the only enemies he has to fight.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-APR-2002
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com essential video:
Platoon put writer-turned-director Oliver Stone on the Hollywood map; it is still his most acclaimed and effective film, probably because it is based on Stone's firsthand experience as an American soldier in Vietnam. Chris (Charlie Sheen) is an infantryman whose loyalty is tested by two superior officers: Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), a former hippie humanist who really cares about his men (this was a few years before he played Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ), and Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), a moody, macho soldier who may have gone over to the dark side. The personalities of the two sergeants correspond to their combat drugs of choice--pot for Elias and booze for Barnes. Stone has become known for his sledgehammer visual style, but in this film it seems perfectly appropriate. His violent and disorienting images have a terrifying immediacy, a you-are-there quality that gives you a sense of how things may have felt to an infantryman in the jungles of Vietnam. Platoon won Oscars for best picture and director. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Vietnam. FUBAR!!
I've read a couple of reviews that downgraded this film as being unrealistic. Of, course only the most sensational aspects of the war are portrayed. Duh, it's a movie. I wasn't over there. The war mercifully ended weeks before I would have been. I do have numerous friends who were. Many will not really talk about it (just like my dad who served 4 years in WWII and saw heavy action. Only after his death have I realized how scarred he was by that experience). I know a guy who used to tell me horror stories similar to those portrayed in this movie. 10 years ago he would tell these stories like jokes and laugh like crazy. I would think "That is one hardcore SOB!" Nowadays he can't talk about Vietnam without breaking down and sobbing and crying. I can see now that he has been living in hell for 30+ years. Maybe this film is unrealistic in the fact that this wasn't the average soldier's experience. I think about 50,000 or so just got killed. This crap did happen though.
Rating:  - lame
Rather than being about the Vietnam war as it really was, this film is basically an exercise in what America wants the vietnam war to be. Despite endless comments to the contrary, there is nothing "realistic" about the film. The characters and plot are almost cartoonish. Its like a postmodernist John Wayne movie with different politics.
In real life, things don't break down into "good" soldiers and "evil" soldiers. Real life and real people are about shades of grey. The war also changed over time. Oliver Stone served in 1967 but the movie is often showing situations that were more out of 1971 with which he had no personal experience.
What a real film about vietnam would show is ordinary people doing a tough job day after day and doing the best they could. Its not about archtype evil officers, good/evil "father" figures and long political monologues.
About the only thing this film got right were the uniforms.
Rating: - Truly Essential for War flick buffs.
Actually, a must have for anyone who enjoys a good picture. All star cast, great story, truly moving in an emotional sense (watch the Bunker Scene, with Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears"). WATCH THIS MOVIE!!
Gonzo
Rating: - A Must See...
Its an Oliver Stone Semi-Autobiographical of his time in Vietnam. Throw in Dale Dye as a Technical Advisor a man that served 3 tours in Nam with 31 engagements and you can bet the film is as real as it gets in its accounts on man vs everything thrown at him.
This is my favorite movie and has been since I seen it.
God Bless everyone that served in Vietnam.
Rating: - The stars... there's no right or wrong in them. They're just there
Oliver Stone directed this powerful film about the Viet Nam War. It is dedicated to the soldiers who fought there, but it depicts a horrible morass, a moral quagmire, that questions the mission, and our whole involvement in that sorry chapter in our nation's history. I saw the Viet Nam memorial in Washington, D.C., and it is very moving, and a fitting monument to that war. It is just a black stone wall with lots of names, the numerous soldiers who died there. Why is that so fitting? It is a black wall, something that tore our country apart, and something as incomprehensible as a black wall.
Oliver Stone has an unaccredited cameo here, but I recognized him. He is the Alpha Company major in bunker. A young Charlie Sheen plays Chris Taylor, an idealistic youth who has volunteered to fight in Viet Nam, but who never bargained for what he got there.
[Referring to Vietnam]
Chris Taylor: Somebody once wrote: "Hell is the impossibility of reason." That's what this place feels like. Hell.
Later on, after struggling to survive for what seems like an eternity, he has this to say:
Chris Taylor: Day by day I struggle to maintain not only my strength but also my sanity. It's all a blur. I have no energy to write. I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. The morale of the men is low, a civil war in the platoon. Half the men with Elias, half with Barnes. There's a lot of suspicion and hate. I can't believe we're fighting each other, when we should be ... Read More
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