I get stuck in some sort of time warp occasionally and miss out on movies that everyone else and their dog has seen as a matter of course. The most glaring example of this is the original Star Wars (1977) movie, which was a huge hit when I was a kid, but which I didn’t see until I was in college. It’s not that I lived a particularly sheltered life or anything. Some cultural artifacts just slip past me somehow. I’m aware of them, but it takes a long time for me to experience them.
Anyway, I finally saw Platoon (1986) this past week (IMDB link). And I found it to be a powerful movie. And I was surprised how good a job Charlie Sheen did in it. Though I enjoy his work in comic roles (like Two and a Half Men), I forget that he’s capable of other, more serious, things. “Enjoyed” is not really the correct word for a war film. Some scenes are truly gut wrenching. But, if it only served to remind me that war is a terrible thing and should always be a last recourse, it served a good purpose. I think there’s quite a lot more in the film to admire than just that message. But I won’t bore you with a dissertation.
I have a great book called Inventing Vietnam: The War in Film and Television. It’s got a good essay on Platoon. One of the book’s theses is that in the 1980’s we re-fought the Vietnam war on our movie screens, interpreting the real event through narratives that allowed us to “win”.