“Platoon” is a 1986 American film about the Vietnam War. It’s one of a long line of such films. Americans love this subject. I guess it’s a complex. Of shabby pants. Still can’t get it off.
The movie was directed by the notorious Oliver Stone, who himself fought in the Vietnam war and used some episodes in his own creation from his own experience. It is surprising that his film was not banned in the States: it shows the American army “chopping” grass, raping Vietnamese women and carrying out punitive actions in Vietnamese villages, avenging the “poor” American soldiers who were killed.
They didn’t ban it, but when Stone went to the military departments looking for help and support for what he was up to, he was sent to a known address culturally, with a script like that. How could he show the American army in such a way? Though, who wanted – he already knew everything about the war from the mouths of its participants – their tongues were not in a knot.
I can hardly say much about the plot. A film about war is a film about war and the battles are the base here. However, the plot is worthy of saying a few words.
The story is based on the service of a naive American “boy” by the name of Chris Taylor, who came to Vietnam as a volunteer. The unpleasant picture that opens at the airport, in the form of a fair number of filled black body bags and, to put it mildly, “not jolly” look of the demobilized, does not embarrass Taylor a bit. He arrived with the right beliefs and “ready” for the horrors of combat, not to mention the hardships of field soldier life.
However, within a week he realizes that he is in Hell, and he already hates everything. His enthusiasm quickly evaporates. And yet he had not yet been “shelled.” But soon this “misunderstanding” is corrected, and he and his platoon go into their first night ambush. And here the “flowers” for Taylor are over, and the “berries” begin to mature, under the influence of which he is to change.
There are enough interesting characters in the movie, but I will concentrate only on the most significant ones, both from the point of view of the plot development and the film’s atmosphere.
Chris Taylor is the main character in the film. As mentioned above, he is a naïve fool, who has to plunge into a whole heap of life products and “give birth” to a few epiphany-level maxims about it.
Because of his, again, naivete and lack of experience of acting in unfriendly conditions and unfamiliar surroundings, he found himself alternately impressed by the other two characters – Staff Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias. And the shifting impressions were, at times, like throwing a piece of you-know-what through an ice-hole.
