PLATOON

Winner of 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and based on the first-hand experience of Oscar winning director Oliver Stone, Platoon is powerful, intense and starkly brutal. Harrowingly realistic and completely convincing (Leonard Maltin), it is a dark, unforgettable memorial (The Washington Post) to every soldier whose innocence was lost in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is a young, naive American who, upon his arrival in Vietnam, quickly discovers that he must do battle not only with the Viet Cong, but also with the gnawing fear, physical exhaustion and intense anger growing within him. While his two commanding officers (Oscar-nominated Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe) draw a fine line between the war they wage against the enemy and the one they fight with each other, the conflict, chaos and hatred permeate Taylor, suffocating his realities and numbing his feelings to man's highest value life.

Chris (Charlie Sheen) is an infantryman whose loyalty is tested by two superior officers: Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe). a former hippie humanist who really cares about his men. and Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger). a moody. macho soldier who may have gone over to the dark side. The personalities of the two sergeants correspond to their combat drugs of choice--pot for Elias and booze for Barnes. Stone has become known for his sledgehammer visual style. but in this film it seems perfectly appropriate. His violent and disorienting images have a terrifying immediacy. a you-are-there quality that gives you a sense of how things may have felt to an infantryman in the jungles of Vietnam.