Platoon (film)
Platoon is a Academy Award winning 1986 Vietnam War
film written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger,
Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon, Keith David, John C. McGinley and
Johnny Depp. The story is drawn from Stone's experiences as an Army combat infantryman
in Vietnam and was written by him upon his return as a counter to the vision of
the war portrayed in John Wayne's The Green Berets. The film won the Academy Award
for Best Picture of 1986.
Tagline : The first casualty of
war is innocence.
Music
Adagio for Strings
The famous theme of
Platoon, composed by Samuel Barber.
Problems listening to the file? See media
help.
The piece played throughout the film is Adagio for Strings by Samuel
Barber.
White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane
Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard
During the memorable scene in the "Underworld" the soldiers sing along to The Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.
Various audio samples from the movie can be heard in the Ministry song "Flashback" from album The Land of Rape and Honey.
During the movie trailer Hello, I
Love You by The Doors can be heard.
Cast
Tom Berenger - Sgt. Bob Barnes
Willem Dafoe - Sgt. Elias Grodin
Charlie Sheen - Pvt. Chris Taylor
Forest Whitaker - Big Harold
Francesco Quinn - Rhah
John C. McGinley - Sgt. Red O'Neill
Richard Edson - Sal
Kevin Dillon - Bunny
Reggie Johnson - Junior Martin
Keith David - King
Johnny Depp - Private Gator Lerner
David Neidorf - Tex
Mark Moses - Lt. Wolfe
Chris Pedersen
- Crawford
Tony Todd - Sgt. Warren
Plot
A young US Army soldier, Private Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), arrives in South Vietnam with several other replacements and is assigned to the 25th Infantry Division (which had a very successful combat record in Vietnam). As the new men step off the plane upon arrival in Vietnam, they see the seasoned veterans who have just finished their tours of duty (with the "Thousand Yard Stare" fully developed), taunting the new guys as they board a transport plane home. Along with fellow soldier Private Gardner, Taylor joins an experienced rifle platoon that has suffered in recent combat operations. His enthusiasm quickly evaporates as he goes on endless patrols and, as a new guy, is assigned to dig foxholes and perform other arduous tasks.
On his first night ambush patrol, his unit is set upon by a squad of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops who walk into the squad's ambush position. The soldier meant to be on guard duty (Junior) has fallen asleep. Private Gardner dies after being shot while standing up in a firefight and Tex (a soldier with a bad attitude towards Elias and new recruits) has his leg blown off from a grenade thrown by Sgt. Red O'Neil (John C. McGinley) . Private Taylor is grazed in the neck. Junior shirks all responsibility, stating that Chris was on guard duty.
As Private Taylor recovers from his wound—a rite of passage that grants him greater social contact with his platoon mates—he reveals that he dropped out of college to volunteer for service in Vietnam (Stone himself had dropped out of Yale twice). He states that he felt college was leading him nowhere and that it was unfair that lower-class youths had to carry the burden of the fighting in Vietnam, while rich kids could avoid the draft. His new friends among the more experienced troops introduce him to the "Underworld," a bunker converted into a pseudo-nightclub, where they smoke marijuana and opium, drink beer, and dance with each other to soul music.
After returning to field duty, Taylor sees more combat and, during another patrol, a bunker complex is discovered. (In real life, the 25th Division encountered tunnel complexes at Cu Chi much like the ones in the film. ) During the examination of a campfire left by the enemy, two soldiers, Sanderson and Sal, are mortally wounded by a booby trap. After leaving the bunker complex area, the soldiers come across another member of their unit, Manny, who has been snatched from his guard duty, tied to a post, and mutilated.
Reaching a nearby village several kilometers north of the bunker with a belief
that the enemy was spotted there, the platoon discovers food and weapons caches.
This scene is loosely based on the true events surrounding the My Lai Massacre.
The villagers insist they were given no choice by the Viet Cong. The troops, tired
and angry because of the deaths of some of their comrades, take out their frustrations
on the village, murdering and torturing several civilians. Staff Sgt. Barnes kills
a woman while interrogating her husband. The platoon burns the village and leaves,
with a final scene depicting the gang rape of a teenage girl (which Chris stops).
Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe), having witnessed Staff Sgt. Barnes' (Tom Berenger) illegal actions and Lt. Wolfe's (Mark Moses) condoning of them, attacks Barnes and then puts the two men on report to their Company Commander (played by Dale Dye, a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and technical advisor to the film). Chris, having originally admired Barnes, now finds his loyalties leaning towards Elias, while Barnes' supporters talk of fragging Elias to prevent him from acting as an eyewitness in a formal report about the illegal killings.
On yet another patrol, the platoon is ambushed. Lt. Wolfe fails to take charge as the platoon suffers losses, and he calls friendly artillery fire down on his own men. Sgt. Elias, correctly anticipating an enemy flanking attack, suggests a flanking ambush to counter the threat. Although Wolfe is skeptical, Barnes agrees to the plan. Elias and three other men, including Pvt. Taylor, move around the fighting to try to intercept the flanking NVA troops. Along with the heavy fighting, many wounded need attention and Barnes calls for them to pull back. This action leaves Elias and his three troops unsupported.
While the rest of the platoon retreats to its landing zone to be airlifted out of the combat area, Barnes goes back, ostensibly to get Elias and his three men out. Barnes orders Taylor and the two others back to the landing zone, telling them that he will get Elias himself. However, instead of bringing Elias back, Barnes ambushes and shoots him.
Barnes then returns to the platoon. When Taylor asks where Elias is, Barnes tells him he is dead. The film's most iconic moment in which during the extraction by helicopter, however, the entire platoon sees Elias alive, badly wounded and running away from the pursuing North Vietnamese. He dies in an open field after being shot several more times by the North Vietnamese troops.
Taylor now suspects that Barnes caused Elias' death and begins talking to his fellow soldiers about killing Barnes in retaliation. As a result there is a confrontation between Taylor and Barnes in the bunker.
The company is sent back into the area and builds defensive positions to bait the NVA. It had been discovered that an entire NVA infantry regiment is on the move south down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This final battle ends with the obliteration of nearly the entire platoon, including Lt. Wolfe, due to the heavy NVA attack and a US aerial napalm attack. During the battle, a berserking Barnes nearly kills Taylor.
At dawn Taylor regains consciousness, finding himself wounded and surrounded by bodies. He takes an AK-47 rifle from a dead NVA soldier and wanders around, aimlessly. Taylor walks past, and ignores, a wounded but potentially dangerous NVA soldier (in the background), suggesting that now he is focused on exacting revenge on Sgt. Barnes. Eventually he finds the wounded Barnes.
Barnes orders Private Taylor to call a medic but Taylor does not budge and instead keeps the rifle trained on Barnes. Sneeringly, Barnes challenges Taylor to "do it." Private Taylor shoots Barnes three times in the chest, killing him. He then collapses and awaits medical attention. A unit of mechanized infantry arrive and begin tending to the survivors. One of the few other survivors of the platoon is Pvt. Francis, who emerges from a bunker and is seemingly horrified to find that he lived through the battle and will therefore be obliged to continue his tour of duty. He grabs a knife and stabs himself in the thigh.
An interesting detail to note is that when he is finally rescued after the final battle of the film, Taylor drops an object. It turns out to be a hand grenade, because Charlie Sheen thought that the character would, at this point, be suicidal.
The injured Private Taylor is reunited with Francis and the two are airlifted from the battlefield. The voiceover of the final scene suggests Chris Taylor is going home to the US, profoundly affected and significantly changed as a person. He states that those who survive have an obligation to those who died there and meditates on his life as a product of two fathers, Barnes and Elias.
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