Of course, Platoon need not be every possible Viet Nam film to be the best one so far. So dirt of the proper hue was trucked in for authenticitys sake. There were guys walking around with pistols, no curfews, shoot-outs in the streets. I got a true picture of the States. And the Vietnamese are either pathetic victims or the invisible, inhuman enemy. Because De Laurentiis had already spent money sending Stone to the Philippines to scout for locations, he decided to keep control of the film's script until he was repaid. In the far-right Washington Times Insight magazine, John Podhoretz castigates it as one of the most repellent movies ever made in this country. The film, he says, blackens the name and belittles the sacrifice of every man and woman who served the United States in the Viet Nam War (including Stone). Politicians are eager to return the salvos. Instead, there is the clear sense of danger all around, and the presence of civilians who sometimes enrage the troops just by standing there and looking confused and helpless. On the next patrol, the platoon is caught in an ambush. During a scene in the "Underworld", the soldiers sing along to "The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, which was also featured in the film's trailer. Already on edge, the platoon is further angered when they discover an enemy supply cache in a nearby village. [41] MGM released the 20th anniversary DVD through Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in 2006 while 20th Century Fox released the Blu-ray version on May 25, 2011. Theyd cut my hair, and Id be a number. Now Barnes finds Chris and is ready to kill him when a blast knocks them unconscious. You had to get a lot of permissions and bribe a new set of people.. Oliver Stone sprang up in bed and found fear staining his sheets. There were no showers or toilets, and everyone had to rotate on night watch. To do some work. Working with Stone was like being caught in a Cuisinart with a madman, James Woods opines. WebCharacters play an important role in Platoon, despite the fact that the film tackles the atrocities of the Vietnam War, there is a great focus put on individuals rather than war itself. It was a state-of-the-art war on both sides. It understands something that the architects of the war never did: how the foliage, the thickness of the jungle, negated U.S. technological superiority. Platoon is the first real Viet Nam film, Halberstam proclaims, and one of the great war movies of all time. My father believed that life was hard. Exterior shooting began on the island of Luzon in the Philippines in February 1986, although the production was almost canceled because of the political upheaval in the country, due to then-president Ferdinand Marcos. Everyone from the ex-hippie to the ex-grunt can be moved by Platoon. Later, Taylor, certain that Barnes shot Elias, attacks Barnes, who pulls a knife and cuts Taylors face before walking away. Chris pays a big price. Says Bob Duncan, 39, who served in the 1st Infantry at the same time Stone was in the 25th: He managed to take every cliche the baby killer and dope addict that weve lived with for the past 20 years and stick them in the movie about Viet Nam. Says another veteran, Nick Nickelson, 43: I hope this doesnt bring back those old depictions. By the time they actually shot the scene, a few hours had passed, and everyone had come down. It is the kind of movie catharsis that may make Platoon a megahit. As a young and naive recruit in Vietnam, Chris Taylor faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man. On their next patrol, the platoon is ambushed and pinned down in a firefight, and the situation is worsened when Wolfe accidentally directs an artillery strike onto his own unit before Barnes calls it off. WebPlatoon was released in the United States on December 19, 1986 and in the Philippines [24] and the United Kingdom in March 1987, with its release in the latter receiving an above 15 rating for strong language, scenes of violence, and soft drug use. [40] Vestron reissued the film twice, in 1991 and 1994. Platoon, American war film, released in 1986, that was written and directed by Oliver Stone and was regarded by many critics as one of the best of the movies about the Vietnam War. Filming took place in the Philippines in February 1986 and lasted 54 days. The dichotomy was bred in him. Corrections? Denzel Washington expressed interest in playing the role of Elias,[9] a character Stone said was based on a soldier he knew in Vietnam. Willem Dafoe generally nails it when it comes to playing weirdos, creeps, and psychopaths. Totally insane, with great passages of lyricism here and there. Oliver was alienated, sarcastic and brooding, says his film-school friend Stanley Weiser, who is collaborating with Stone on a script about Wall Street crime. In Viet Nam, Stone suggests, G.I.s re-created the world back home, with its antagonisms of race, region and class. Synopsis However, it is imperative to note that the movie was shot at a time when the Philippines was experiencing the People Power Revolution. Free shipping for many products! [32][33] Gene Siskel also awarded the film four out of four stars,[34] and observed that Vietnam War veterans greatly identified with the film. Success and Sean have made Oliver much mellower, Elizabeth notes. Hes a world traveler who lives in France a lot of the time now, but in early 1986, the 22-year-old Depp had never left the U.S. Stone wrote a screenplay based on his experiences in Vietnam as soon as he got back from the war, in 1969. Oliver Stone's anti-war epic tells the tale of a young Army recruit sent to Vietnam who witnesses the atrocities of war many of which are carried out by supposed "comrades. My dad was a cold warrior, and I was a cold-war baby. "[18], Scenes were shot in Mount Makiling, Laguna (province) (for the forest scenes), Cavite (for the river and village scenes), and Villamor Air Base near Manila. I killed. [28], On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 120 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. Netflix has ordered a Marine comedy drama starring Miles Heizer and Vera Farmiga. [7], James Woods, who had starred in Stone's film Salvador, was offered a part in Platoon. I wanted to make a document of this forgotten pocket of time. The province of Cavite was also utilized for this purpose. Taylor is a nave middle-class young man who dropped out of college to volunteer for Vietnam for idealistic reasons. With its critical, popular and insider acclaim swelling, Platoon began to shoulder its way toward the front rank of Oscar favorites. The film does not glamourize or trivialize death with grotesque special effects. BATTLEGROUND - PLATOON, written and directed by Oliver They are like Claudius and the Ghost wrestling for Hamlets allegiance. Bill. It is a huge black slab of remembrance, chiseled in sorrow and anger the first Viet Nam Memorial movie. Platoon makes you feel youve been there and never want to go back. James Woods, who starred in Stones previous film, Salvador, calls him an artist whose vision transcends politics. The headquarters of the Philippines Air Force, Colonel Jesus Villamor Air Base, also appears on the list of filming locations. Taylor regains consciousness the following morning, picks up an enemy rifle, and finds Barnes, who orders Taylor to call a medic. It is a picture first and foremost, a series of pictures that lodge in the mind with other indelible images of war. Updates? One gets killed, the other lives. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army (NVA) were shadowy figures in this family tragedy; stage center, it was sibling riflery. WebPlatoon Photos View all photos Movie Info Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) leaves his university studies to enlist in combat duty in Vietnam in 1967. Platoon pushes the metaphor further, thousands of miles away from the world, into the combat zones of Nam. The Real 25th Infantry Division In The Vietnam War In any other war, they would have made movies about us too. Apr 28, 2023, 9:35 AM PDT. Hollywood (and not just Hollywood) refused to see that Viet Nam was different. WebFilming began in February 2022 in Alicante, Spain, with Dar Salim, Alexander Ludwig, Antony Starr, Jason Wong, Bobby Schofield, Sean Sagar, Christian Ochoa and Emily Beecham added to the cast. Speaking about the reality, Stone said, And then out of nowhere there was this peoples revolution. Sure, they thought. All the old givens beau geste, military master plans, unswerving belief in the officer class were fatally irrelevant to a guerrilla war. The film is at times very upsetting and although the violence isn't gratuitously bloody or gross, almost every victim dies slowly and mercy is rare on the battlefield. Im a bum. I felt the solution was total anonymity. It is situated in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. During a subsequent patrol, three men are killed by booby traps and unseen assailants. WebPlatoon is a 1986 American war film written and directed by Oliver Stone, starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Keith David, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Forest Whitaker, and Johnny Depp. The book was now 1,400 pages. . Almost immediately I realized that combat is totally random. See details Payments: Special financing available. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. I came back really visceral. Barnes questions the village chief (Bernardo Manalili), using Lerner (Johnny Depp) as a translator. Platoon is a war film based on the real-life experiences that the director, Oliver Stone, had when he was serving as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam in 1967. And at nine he started work on a book, 900 pages about his family and his life. Despite his friendship with the director, he turned it down, later teasingly saying he "couldn't face going into another jungle with [Oliver Stone]". The acts of brutality escalate after a weapons cache is found. The platoon is sent back to the front line to maintain defensive positions, where Taylor shares a foxhole with another soldier named Francis. In an interview with Maria Wilhelm of People, he called the film's depiction of black troops "a slap in the face". Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. Hes not an easy lay. Stone and his second wife, Elizabeth, 37, look the family-album picture of swank domesticity in their Santa Monica home. Hes filled with them, and hes thrilled with them.. Elias later tells Captain Harris (Dale Dye) that he wants to file a report against Barnes for shooting the village chiefs wife, and Harris tells Barnes that he will be court-martialed if there is evidence that he committed an illegal shooting. Promoted to Staff Sergeant (Platoon Sergeant): at end of film. Platoon makes us real. Platoon could very well be misunderstood into superhit status. Stone was born in 1946, the only child of a Jewish stockbroker and the French Catholic girl he met just after V-E day while serving as a colonel on Eisenhowers staff. Both men are legendary soldiers who have survived long years in Viet Nam Elias by a kind of supernal sylvan grace, Barnes by simply refusing to die. Platoon says that American soldiers the young men we sent there to do our righteous dirty work turned their frustrations toward fratricide. The guy Stone really liked was Sheens older brother, Emilio Estevez. Because Barnes deserved killing. Or has he emulated his enemy? WebPLATOON has won the right to be in the top 100 films of The American Film Institute standing on its own at # 83. But I did save a girl who was being raped by two of the guys; I think they wouldve killed her. I hated America. You had to get a lot of permissions and bribe a new set of people. Two further projects concerning the war, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth, completed something like a trilogy. Itinerary for a young wanderluster: on a merchant marine ship from Saigon to Oregon; in Guadalajara, Mexico, writing 400 pages of a novel; back to Yale, then dropping out a second and last time to concentrate on his writing. To me the American involvement was correct. Helicopters pick up the surviving members of the platoon, but as they are lifting off, Elias emerges from the jungle, fleeing from several North Vietnamese soldiers, and he is killed. And when Simon & Schuster rejected it, I gave up. Dateline: Hell!, Dispatch from Dong Ha, maybe even A Scrambler to the Front . Shout! The black soldiers are occasionally patronized and sentimentalized; they stand to the side while the white soldiers grab all the big emotions. It was Jack London- type experiences in a Joycean style. Furthermore, the main camp was located in Maragadong. I think the film will become an American classic. In the movie theaters, this illegal shooting usually gets a big hand. They were even given lessons on many topics such as basic jungle warfare, combat, weapon handling, target practice, cooking, radio communication, and first aid. Stone has another answer: I also wanted to show that Chris came out of the war stained and soiled all of us, every vet. In 1998, the American Film Institute placed Platoon at #83 in their "AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies" poll. I threw half the manuscript in the East River and said, My father is right. Stone said that he was trying to break them down, "to mess with their heads so we could get that dog-tired, don't give a damn attitude, the anger, the irritation the casual approach to death". This is also his first film about the war, followed by Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth.These three films are often said to form a For a nation whose war history had read like a John Wayne war movie where good guys finish first by being tough and playing fair the polarization was soul-souring. The film was a box office success upon its release, grossing $138.5 million domestically against its $6 million budget. Since the cast spent two weeks in boot camp and every scene was filmed in the Philippines, Platoon is a pretty accurate depiction of what life was like during the controversial Vietnam War. At five he composed skits for a marionette show, casting his French cousins in the parts. He won a BAFTA award, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar for his direction, and he was awarded the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin International Film Festival. I went over and broke it up. And a resounding you bet to the question, Can a ferocious movie about an unpopular war, filmed on the cheap with no stars and turned down by every major studio, find success, controversy and the promise of an Oscar statuette at the end of the tunnel? Platoon, American war film, released in 1986, that was written and directed by Oliver Stone and was regarded by many critics as one of the best of the movies about the Vietnam War. Itll be easier to make a movie in the Philippines than in Vietnam, they thought. Although the story is based in Vietnam, filmmakers actually captured the gritty war scenes in the Philippines. That night, a major NVA assault occurs, and the defensive lines are broken. The bunker is booby-trapped, however, and three men are killed. The intelligentsia can credit Platoon with expressing, in bold cinematic strokes, Stones grand themes of comradeship and betrayal. [39] After a settlement was reached, it was finally released on tape on January 22, 1988 through HBO, and then reissued on September 1, 1988 by Vestron. He wouldnt stop smiling, says Stone, and I just got pissed off and lost it. Stones achievement is to pound and hack this theme into a ripping yarn about a good man, an evil man and an Everyman a young, romanticized Oliver Stone suspended between them with his life and ideals in the balance. Though the platoon is officially under the command of the young and inexperienced Lieutenant Wolfe, the soldiers instead defer to two of his older and more experienced subordinates: the cynical Staff Sergeant Barnes, and the more idealistic Sergeant Elias. Its usually around day two or day three [the actors] realize playtime is over and that this guy is serious, he recalled., Though hed been lauded as a screenwriter for Midnight Express and Scarface, Stones previous directorial effortsThe Hand (1981) and Salvador (1986, 10 months before Platoon)had been flops.