Beautiful, moving film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie might leave the viewer unsatisfied. No heroes, no happy end, no winning, even the humorous scenes are disturbing. Instead, this movie shows the main character's, a man of privilege, education and conscience, transformation by war and military service. War, an extraordinary circumstance, can bring out the best or worst in men, transform them according to their disposition and also change the warring nations en suite. All this and more is incorporated here, underlined by a marvelous score, convincingly acted in almost every role, scarring to watch, thought provoking and honest. On the downside, there are some minor continuity errors, lack in realism and typical Oliver Stone-esque transcendental scenes, though non of these infringe on any of the premises of this film unless you are a stickler for every last detail. This is deservedly amongst the best films about the U.S. Vietnam war ever made.

It's with Stone's slightly journalistic slant that this Vietnam War film finds its footing as a more accurate and honest depiction of a well-publicised conflict, one that's clearly informed by the director's own experiences and his understandable desire to portray them in an unbiased, truthful way often not done in favour of more patriotic fare. Yet, 'Platoon (1986)' still suffers from the almost clip-show mentality most war pictures tend to adopt, even though it is told from the perspective of the soldiers in a very 'boots-on-the-ground' kind of way and isn't concerned with the larger picture of generals moving pieces on a proverbial chessboard. Thankfully, an inner struggle soon starts to emerge within the titular platoon and it is this, along with the individual development of the characters and how they handle the impossible situations they are placed in, that forms the basis for the overarching story. The piece always manages to maintain at least some semblance of narrative amongst the battles and boredom of long-form infantry life. 6/10

I do not watch Vietnam movies because having served in the war, most are far from the reality my expediences of combat. However Oliver Stone did a great job of bringing his own wartime experience to the screen. Charlie Sheen was not the first choice for his part and his performance showed why. He apparently left a lot of his character wisping away in the smoke of a hash pipe and not in the movie. Worse and by that I mean THE worst actor (not character) but actor was Kevin Dillon. Having watched Entourage and enjoying it, except for Dillon, he also caused my 7/10 score for Platoon. It was just Johnny Drama in Vietnam and Entourage was Bunny survives the war (unfortunately) and goes to Hollywood. Dillon in everything I have watched him in, is a stiff, cardboard cutout of someone that should be there but didn't show up. He has only 2 facial expressions, bad attempts to smile and worse attempts to frown, from which he tries to cover the entire range of a characters emotional actions and responses.Willem Defoe, Tom Berenger and Forest Whitaker were the three main actors who along with several others rated this movie a 7 for me. The soundtrack was great, the cinematography was excellent and for that Oliver Stone deserves his awards. I have however watched my last anything with Kevin Dillon anywhere in it. In all, I do so wish Mr. Stone had looked further than Charlie Sheen for an actor, a real actor anyway, and for my money the movie would have been better without the character of Bunny entirely if Dillon was the only choice. YMMV

Platoon is a very good film. Willem DeFoe is the hero in it. He is incredible. I am so glad he didn't really get shot. I often believe that what I see in movies is real, and sometimes it is and you ain't foolin' me b's.Charlie Sheen plays Mando, the Argentinian madman rebel hellbent on seeking out and destroying the Vietcong man by man. He is kind of lost, without a purpose unlike Willem, but what purpose is there in war? But Willem had one.Charlie was a ruthless killing machine. At the end he begins to understand that there is good in men when he sees Willem get gunned down. And that sounds horrific, but he appreciated Willem. You want me to remember all these names? This is Nam, b.Tom Berringer plays a madman. But this is juxtaposed by his role in Major League, so I don't give a toss. Or do I? Catch! Good catch Willie Mays Hayes.