They hit us with about 5,000 troops that night. The Real 25th Infantry Division In The Vietnam War Platoon ist der Beginn einer Trilogie ber den Vietnamkrieg. Now in command, Captain Harris orders air support to expend all remaining ordnance inside the perimeter. The platoon is sent back to the front line to maintain defensive positions, where Taylor shares a foxhole with another soldier named Francis. They are like Claudius and the Ghost wrestling for Hamlets allegiance. Updates? I was never a religious person I was raised Protestant, the great compromise but I became religious in Viet Nam. It has nothing to do with heroism. Mount Makiling, which is near Los Banos, was heavily used for capturing those scenes that involved the forest, including the artillery attack from the woods. SGT. Before it won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1986, Platoon made waves simply by doing something new: showing the Vietnam War from the perspective of someone who fought in it. 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. Elias takes Taylor, Rhah and Crawford to intercept flanking enemy troops, while Barnes orders the rest of the platoon to retreat and goes back into the jungle to find Elias' group. Furthermore, the movie was shot chronologically. But John Wheeler, 42, a veteran who is president of the Center for the Study of the Viet Nam Generation in Washington and chairman of the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial Fund, argues that there were drug cultures; there were green lieutenants. Working with Stone was like being caught in a Cuisinart with a madman, James Woods opines. Barnes goes after them, and he shoots Elias and later tells Taylor that Elias is dead. God help us, I dont want to go back into a closet again., Other vets deny the prevalence of dope smoking and the depiction of military officers as either psychos or cowards. Stone's active duty service resulted in a "big change" in how he viewed life and the war. The acts of brutality escalate after a weapons cache is found. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital It is enough that Stone has devised a drama of palpable realism that is also a metaphor for the uncivil war that raged in the U.S. and can flare up anytime in any family. Those guys are us.. They spent two weeks as soldiers in the Philippine jungle, digging holes to live in, eating from ration cans, carrying real weight, and staying in character. [19][20], In 1986, a novelization of the film script, written by Dale Dye, was published. PLATOON has won the right to be in the top 100 films of The American Film Institute standing on its own at # 83. You can wilt from the claustrophobic heat of this Rousseauvian jungle; feel the sting of the leeches as they snack on Chris flesh; hear all at once the chorus of insects, an enemys approaching footsteps on the green carpet and Chris heartbeat on night patrol. Says Stanley Weiser: Olivers been around the block ten times and wont be seduced by money. Apr 28, 2023, 9:35 AM PDT. I was wounded in the back of the neck an inch to the right and Id have been dead and the guy next to me had his arm blown off. He emptied his rifle clip at a mans feet, as Charlie does in the movie. By the time Sheen auditioned again a few years later, he had grown into the role. The production made a deal with the Philippine military for the use of military equipment. Sergeant. He had his valet; his closet was immaculate. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. It was on-the-job training: Heres your machete, kid; you cut point. [2] According to Helander, the 1982 American action film First Blood and the real-life Finnish military sniper Simo Hyh served as Only Company C, a standard-issue war film about recruits betrayed by their incompetent officers, spent much time in a Nam combat zone. Taylor regains consciousness the following morning, picks up an enemy rifle, and finds Barnes, who orders Taylor to call a medic. [25], In its seventh weekend of release, the film expanded from 214 theatres to 590 and became number one at the United States box office with a gross of $8,352,394. Chris, who feels an irresistible kinship to both men, says they were fighting for possession of my soul. The films most controversial question is, Who won? But can Chris or the audience take moral satisfaction in this deed? 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. [7], James Woods, who had starred in Stone's film Salvador, was offered a part in Platoon. 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. 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. Platoons narration, in the form of Chris letters to his grandmother, is often as stilted and redundant as silent-movie title cards. He is hard to know and harder to destroy, a creature of Stones wild literary sentiment. She spent most of the next 42 years working as a copy editor and editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. The film score was by George Delerue. He said, Youll do all right. This film has a very strong adult content and is not for everyone in the family, however I will say that it will always be a part of my history. The younger man used his characters from the Break screenplay and developed a new screenplay, which he titled Platoon. The movie crowds you; it doesn't leave you room for an honest emotion. Taylor is a nave middle-class young man who dropped out of college to volunteer for Vietnam for idealistic reasons. Speaking about the reality, Stone said, And then out of nowhere there was this peoples revolution. I wanted to make a document of this forgotten pocket of time. I remember the helicopters were pretty dangerous because they werent maintained well. The production, which cost $6.5 million, made use of Vietnamese refugees who were living in the area. Besides, he spent only $6 million on Platoon about half the budget of a typical Hollywood film. WebPlatoon's demolition expert. 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. And after that, studios had another excuse not to make Platoon: why bother, when Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter had already covered it? Free shipping for many products! Despite his friendship with the director, he turned it down, later teasingly saying he "couldn't face going into another jungle with [Oliver Stone]". Instead, he cowrote Year of the Dragon for a lower-than-usual fee of $200,000, on the condition from producer Dino De Laurentiis would next produce Platoon. 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. The young man lifts his weapon and, when Barnes says, Do it, does the bastard in. The bad news is that Im in a California jail, facing five to 20. Stone says his father helped get the charges dropped. It understands something that the architects of the war never did: how the foliage, the thickness of the jungle, negated U.S. technological superiority. Almost immediately I realized that combat is totally random. When a naive new boy shows Chris a photo of his sweetheart, you just know that, in the best 40s-movie fashion, the guys a goner. The guy Stone really liked was Sheens older brother, Emilio Estevez. In its early limited opening, Platoon is already a prestige hit, and the film shows signs of becoming a blockbuster as it opens across the country over the next three weeks. You had to get a lot of permissions and bribe a new set of people.. Interestingly, the cast was in for a shock as they were sent to live in the heart of the jungle as opposed to a hotel. Taylor then assaults Barnes but is quickly overpowered, and Barnes cuts Taylor near his eye with a push dagger before departing. In Viet Nam, Stone suggests, G.I.s re-created the world back home, with its antagonisms of race, region and class. Welcome back to the war that, just 20 years ago, turned America schizophrenic. So dirt of the proper hue was trucked in for authenticitys sake. With the help of well-known Asian producer Mark Hill, the shoot commenced, as scheduled, two days after Marcos fled the country. To do some work. Stone's Platoon was promoted as the first Vietnam film made by a real-life veteran of the war, and more than lives up to that promise. Hes amazed that people like it. Producer Martin Bregman attempted to elicit studio interest in the project, but was not successful. Stone dedicated the film to his recently deceased father. The same month he arrived back from Viet Nam, he was busted for carrying an ounce of marijuana across the Mexico-U.S. border, and called his father, saying, The good news is that Im out of Viet Nam. So I joined the Army. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. He wrote eleven scripts in his spare time, directed a low-budget Canadian thriller called Seizure, and in 1975 got an agent through the graces of Screenwriter Robert Bolt. I would have joined the Black Panthers if theyd asked me. After a scene hed say, You sucked or You nailed it. Thats just my style., Right now Stone is Hollywoods hot new guy. The Stones lived in Manhattan town houses and Stamford, Conn., homes; Oliver went to Manhattans tony Trinity School and the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa.; he summered with his maternal grandparents and spoke French before he learned English. 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. Stone has been described as difficult to work with even under the best of circumstances, and the gruelingPlatoon shoot10 weeks in the miserable Philippine junglewas in another category. Guys like Sergeant Barnes and there really was a sergeant as scarred and obsessed as Barnes were in this group. 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. Lou Stone wrote a monthly newsletter about economics and politics; his son describes the style as right-wing Walter Lippmann, a view of the world every month. [35] In his New York Times review, Vincent Canby described Platoon as "possibly the best work of any kind about the Vietnam War since Michael Herr's vigorous and hallucinatory book Dispatches. Pvt Rhah (Survives): Given command of Elias's squad and seen waving at film end. The man denies that the villagers aid the North Vietnamese armed forces.