Platoon
Academy Award × 4·AFI #86·National Film Registry
Rent/Purchase
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.
What critics thought
Broadly celebrated on release as one of the definitive films about Vietnam, Platoon earned near-universal praise from mainstream critics for its ground-level intensity and the rawness of its performances. The sharpest dissent came not from professional reviewers but from Black veterans and journalists, who argued the film's depiction of African-American soldiers recycled damaging Hollywood stereotypes, and from veterans more broadly, who were divided over whether Stone's personal account captured the war honestly or obscured as much as it revealed.
“possibly the best work of any kind about the Vietnam War since Michael Herr's vigorous and hallucinatory book Dispatches”
Vincent Canby·New York Times
“barely rises above the age-old Hollywood stereotypes of blacks as celluloid savages and coons who do silly things”
People
Genres
Drama, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorOliver Stone
StarringCharlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Kevin Dillon, Forest Whitaker
ComposerGeorges Delerue
Platoon
Academy Award × 4·AFI #86·National Film Registry
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.
What critics thought
Broadly celebrated on release as one of the definitive films about Vietnam, Platoon earned near-universal praise from mainstream critics for its ground-level intensity and the rawness of its performances. The sharpest dissent came not from professional reviewers but from Black veterans and journalists, who argued the film's depiction of African-American soldiers recycled damaging Hollywood stereotypes, and from veterans more broadly, who were divided over whether Stone's personal account captured the war honestly or obscured as much as it revealed.
“possibly the best work of any kind about the Vietnam War since Michael Herr's vigorous and hallucinatory book Dispatches”
Vincent Canby·New York Times
“barely rises above the age-old Hollywood stereotypes of blacks as celluloid savages and coons who do silly things”
People
Genres
Drama, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorOliver Stone
StarringCharlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Kevin Dillon, Forest Whitaker
ComposerGeorges Delerue
Rent/Purchase