Struggling against living in the dangerous jungles of Vietnam, where he fights in a bloody war, the thing that affects badly on his personality, as he becomes lonely and avoids people, but incidents come to climax when he finds himself involved in a bloody fight between trips, the thing that makes his life in danger.
No sane person should want to get any closer to war than this film.
Philadelphia Daily News
February 24, 2014
Platoon is not the definitive Vietnam statement that Stone may have intended, or that others are already claiming it to be. But it is a powerful document about that sad war, and a riveting piece of moviemaking.
Platoon is filled with one fine performance after another, and one can only wish that every person who saw the cartoonish war fantasy that was Rambo would buy a ticket to Platoon and bear witness to something closer to the truth.
Precisely because Stone forces you to experience a grunt's tunnel vision and rage, Platoon is a film of inspiring empathy and awesome force. Curiously, that same tunnelvision in the end compromises Platoon.
The utter chaos of war in Vietnam is brilliantly portrayed. No one can deny this film the power of its images and the weight of all-pervasive terror it creates.
This film is an act of courage. Stone, the gutsy writer-director, records in a devastating barrage of images the relentless horror and the senseless carnage experienced by far too many Americans in Vietnam.