Platoon: Critic Reviews

Possibly the best work of any kind about the Vietnam War since Michael Herr's vigorous and hallucinatory book 'Dispatches.

Platoon is like the Wall -- a dark and unforgettable memorial to the dead of Vietnam and an awesome requiem to the eternity of war.

The movie is beautifully written (by Stone), constructed with strong, clean lines, immaculately paced and regularly surprising.

I know that Platoon is being acclaimed for its realism, and I expect to be chastened for being a woman finding fault with a war film. But I've probably seen as much combat as most of the men saying, 'This is how war is.'

A film that says...that before you can make any vast, sweeping statements about Vietnam, you have to begin by understanding the bottom line, which is that a lot of people went over there and got killed, dead, and that is what the war meant for them.

...it's still the standard against which all other movies about the Vietnam War are judged.

For all the purported naturalism, the film seems resolutely schematic, and the attitudes shaping the drama are far from open-ended.

The artistic veneer Stone applies, along with the simpy narration provided for Sheen in the way of letters to his grandmother, detract significantly from the work's immediacy.

Platoon is one of those movies that, once seen, will never be forgotten, and, at least for those who were not in Vietnam, will forever alter the way in which the war is considered.

Platoon is different. It matters.

The first and best of Stone's Vietnam trilogy, it's also one of his finest pieces of work.

Most war films adhere to a big-picture purview, explaining which battles meant what and fulfilled which strategic objectives. Stone's effort skirts all that in favor of wrapping the viewer in visceral detail.

A terrific film from a filmmaker long absent from his art, Platoon is a frightening and challenging look into the battlefield operations of Vietnam.

Stone's eye-blistering images possess an awesome power, which sets the senses reeling and leaves the mind disturbed.

... excellent ... elegiac and poetry-stuffed

Mixing realistic reportage of combat with more conventional morality play (the narrative strategy of all his films), Stone employs the two sergeants (Berenger and Dafoe) as realistic soldiers as well as broader symbols of Good and Evil.

well made but dishonestly anti-American

Stone takes us into the hell that was the Vietnam War and turns out a provocative film.

A tour de force with excellent ensemble performances by the full cast, Platoon succeeds in conveying the multi-dimensional reality of the Vietnam War