Review of Platoon (1986) by Familiar S — 20 Feb 2011

Since it was on the IMDb Top 250 list, and wasn't a love story or animation (I avoid those genres as far as possible), I'd to give it a go. And it was an okay war movie. But definitely not so great as I was expecting.

JFK (of course, I'm talking of the 1991 flick and not The JFK in person for real) introduced me to Oliver Stone's work, and it's one of my all-time favorites. Little did I know that it'll leave some side-effects too.

Since JFK, I've had relatively high expectation from his movies. Most probably, that's the reason I was left unsatisfied by his other ventures like 'Nixon' and 'World Trade Center', and didn't find Platoon to be a ground-breaking experience either.

In fact, this war movie was nowhere near as great as J.P. Dutta's 'Border' based on Indo-Pak war. Yeah, I know most people will frown at this. Foreigners might not find 'Border' any good because it's a typical Bollywood flick.

Though lengthy (including a few long songs), it was highly entertaining. It's the best war film ever. Sorry, I shouldn't have crossed the Border here; let's get back to Platoon. I was surprised to find Forest Whitaker getting less footage, and Johnny Depp hardly appears on screen That wasn't the problem, though.

The movie succeeds in displaying the soldiers' agonies and difficulties during the Vietnam war, but it falls short of entertainment (it's not highly enlightening either) value and ended up as "just another war movie" for me.

Then again, it had some powerful dialogues and didn't need to rely on unnecessary scenes. I like that decency in Oliver Stone's movies (well, at least, in his four movies that I've seen till date).

He doesn't have to use cheap tricks like nudity and sex to be an 'inevitable part' of the script [unlike most Hollywood and foreign films which often claim (which is a lame excuse in most cases, though not all) that it was there only and only because of the script's indispensable demand] to attract viewers.

Hope he'd maintain this style and give some worthwhile movies in the future.