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Film: Platoon

Somebody once wrote: "Hell is the impossibility of reason". That's what this place feels like. Hell. I hate it already and it's only been a week.

— Private Chris Taylor

Platoon is an acclaimed war film written and directed by Oliver Stone based on his experiences as an American soldier in The Vietnam War. It was released in 1986 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The film follows a new recruit named Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) as he gets thrown into the humid, alien and deadly jungles of war and gives a frank look at the toll the war took on the men that fought, lived and died in the jungle. The main conflict is the murder of innocent civilians causing a rift in the platoon while Chris tries to find the correct thing to do in a war with ambiguous morals.

It is generally considered a milestone in war films in that the battles are far from glamorized and it is not afraid of showing just how hellish it can be; this makes it come closer to defeating Do Not Do This Cool Thing than many other films.

Platoon provides examples of:

All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats: Many of the Vietnamese civillians.
Anachronism Stew: Colt Model 653 carbines standing in for CAR-15/XM-177's.
Anyone Can Die: And at any moment, just like in war.
Asshole Victim: Most notably Pvt. Bunny and Lt. Thomas Wolfe during the final battle. In general, most, if not all, of the soldiers (excluding Chris and Sgt. Elias Grodin) in the platoon might count. It's hard to root for or to feel sympathy for any of them after they attempted to massacre the Vietnamese villagers.
Ax Crazy: Whenever Taylor snaps, he becomes this.
IT'S FUCKING BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!
Backed by the Pentagon: Defied. The military refused to have anything to do with this film.
Big "NO!": Chris shouts this just as Barnes is about to kill him during the final battle by the end of the movie.
Blood Knight: Sgt. Bob Barnes is a frightening example.
Booby Trap/Schmuck Bait: Be careful opening that box of documents, guys.
- The odd thing is, just before lifting the box, he was telling his comrade to be careful about where he stepped and what he touched because of... well, y'know. Why didn't he just grab the papers from within the box? The Idiot Ball, that's why.
California Doubling: The Philippines for Vietnam.
Cassandra Truth: When Junior falls asleep on his watch, blowing an ambush, he immediately tells a bold-faced lie and says it was Chris. The others believe Junior unquestioningly since Chris is the rookie. Chris meekly tries to defend himself ("I didn't fall asleep. It was Junior.") but it falls on deaf ears. "Excuses are like assholes! Everybody has one!"
Chromosome Casting: All of the characters are men (appropriate given the setting and period).
Colonel Kilgore: Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes.
Cluster F-Bomb: Elias when he finds out what Barnes did at the village. So bad that even career soldiers thought it was over-the-top.
Couldn't Find a Lighter: One of the characters lights his cigarette from a villager's burning hut that the American soldiers have just torched.
Crucified Hero Shot
Death from Above: And below. And left, right, front, and back.
Downer Ending
Drill Sergeant Nasty: Sergeant Barnes, before revealing himself as a killing machine.
Every Helicopter Is A Huey
Evil Counterpart/Foil: Elias and Barnes function as this; Chris even compares his conflict between the good and evil inside of him to their conflict.
Evil Is Hammy: Barnes.
Evil Versus Evil: The sociopathic American soldiers themselves (with the exception of Taylor and Elias) may not be one of the movies' saintly soldiers, but the NVA who were against them were as bad as them.
Eye Scream: Wolfe gets shot in the eyes during the Final Battle before being fragged in the head.
Final Battle: And how!
For the Evulz: Basically the reason why Barnes and Bunny likes to go around killing people in war.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Barnes in Chris' hallucinogenic experience of the final battle.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Barnes has a nasty scar that zig-zags all up and down the right side of his face.
- Chris earns a classic "good" scar on his cheek from his fight with Barnes. As Chris leaves on the chopper after killing Barnes, he has a deep cut on his face almost identical to Barnes'.
Good Is Not Nice: The platoon fractures into an idealist group loyal to Elias and a survivalist group loyal to Barnes. However, the stoners in Elias' group are far from saints. Elias and Taylor are the most moral of the entire platoon, and they do a lot of drugs, cursing, and starting fights.
- One soldier worries about Bunny and morality, judging un-Christian. Rewind a moment earlier: he was among the group of soldiers raping the girls.
Jerkass: A majority of the soldiers (bar Chris and Elias, who look like absolute saints compared to the others, despite their constant swearing) that you might see in this movie were assholes from start to finish, especially Barnes, Bunny and Wolfe. And don't even start about the village scene where they interrogate the civilians.
Karmic Death: Chris frags Barnes with three rounds in the upper-right torso, exactly how Barnes shot Elias.
Licensed Game: A couple of them. Probably some of the least necessary film-to-game adaptations ever, given that the movie was demonizing the war. They at least tried to replicate the film's message in the NES game by giving you a "Morale" gauge which goes down when you kill innocents.
Mentor Occupational Hazard: Elias.
Manly Tears: Chris weeps at the end of the film.
The Messiah: Elias.
More Dakka
My Girl Back Home: Complete with wallet picture and all.
Na�ve Newcomer: Chris, at first.
The Neidermeyer: Wolfe, the leader of the titular platoon. An incompetent coward who is unable to control his own soldiers, he lets Elias and Barnes do as they like (and the only order he gives is to burn down the village). US Army leadership classes have used Wolfe an example of how a junior officer should not behave.
New Meat: Chris, Gardner and Bunny.
No One Gets Left Behind: Tragically inverted.
The Obi-Wan: Elias is faster, stronger and more experienced than his student Chris.
Obligatory War Crime Scene: Pretty much everything Bunny does, including beating a crippled Vietnamese civilian and his elderly mother to death just for the hell of it, and nearly raping a young girl.
Opposing Combat Philosophies: Elias (laid-back/tactical) and Barnes (aggressive). Stone based them on two different sergeants he knew while he was in Vietnam. They never met but Stone wondered what would happen if two men of such opposing viewpoints were in the same platoon.
Opposed Mentors: Wide-Eyed Idealist Chris is torn between two Sergeants about how he should conduct himself in Vietnam. As his closing monologue goes" The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days. As I'm sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called "possession of my soul".
Old Soldier: Most of the members of the platoon when Chris arrives, and eventually Chris becomes one himself.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: See Glowing Eyes of Doom.
Retirony: Subverted. After announcing that he's going home in a chopper in ten minutes with the final battle approaching, King (Keith David) actually does make it out alive.
Rule of Symbolism: the snakes Chris keeps seeing.
- Chris Taylor. One of the soldiers even makes a joke about him dying and being resurrected.
Screw the War, We're Partying: Subverted with Elias, a stoner with a relativist attitude to war who is still a Complete Bad Ass and a more effective commander than Barnes.
- Although to be fair, there is a literal party scene at one point, complete with joints and a "Tracks of My Tears" singalong.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Junior bolts for dear life when he realizes he and Bunny are completely overrun by the Viet Cong. He doesn't make it.
Sergeant Rock: Elias and Barnes, in their own ways.
Shotguns Are Just Better: Bunny.
Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: On the cynical side.
Sociopathic Soldier: Quite a few of them, though somewhat understandably so. Barnes would be the prime example.
Suicide Attack: During the Final Battle, there's that one guy who runs straight into company command and suicide bombs it (taking the director with him).
The Vietnam War
Thousand Yard Stare: Chris after he kills Barnes.
Truth in Television/Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Ask any Vietnam veteran what the war was like.
- The really big fight at the end is based on the New Years Day Battle of 1968 that Stone lived through.
Tunnel Network: Elias infiltrates an underground VC tunnel at one point in the film.
Unfriendly Fire: And more than once.
The Vietnam War: One of the definitive films about it.
War Is Hell: This movie does not attempt balance: it is an all-out War Is Hell work. It contains war crimes including murder and attempted rape, graphic imagery of violent death and maiming, PTSD, drug use, mistaken fire on friendly units, and focuses on lethal infighting. ^note
You Are in Command Now: Red O'Neill. Doubles as an Oh Crap.
Zerg Rush: The final attack of the NVA.