ABSTRACT
Platoon, Oliver Stone's first film about Vietnam, takes Chris Taylor, a young recruit filled with good intentions and patriotic beliefs, and deposits him in a "hell," where many of his illusions about bravery, the army, and the US cause in Vietnam are badly shaken, if not destroyed. Despite their political relevance, Vietnam films of the late 1970s and 1980s, with few exceptions, preferred a generic "war is hell" critique to an explicit condemnation of US policy and its effects in Southeast Asia. Platoon, released in 1986, fits the mold of the typical Vietnam film in its view of war as a rite of passage for young men and its sacrifice of a politically specific statement against US involvement in Vietnam for the more generic "war is hell" critique. Stone's increasing sense of his hero's journey as spiritual and inward rather than rational and outward is evidenced in the opening shots of Heaven and Earth.
