Platoon (1986)

Let's continue with the Charlie Sheen movies shall we? Although this time it's not a comedy.

"Platoon is a 1986 American war film written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen & Keith David. Stone wrote the story based upon his experiences as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam, as a counter to the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne's The Green Berets." (Wikipedia).

The movie follows a volunteer infantryman Chris Taylor's (Charlie Sheen) perspective of his platoon's encounters in the Vietnam war. The movie creates a very ruthless image of the nature of Vietnam war. While having very tense and realistic atmosphere in the war scenes, it also shows the developement of the soldier's psycological and ethic values, and the significant decrease of the value of human life. How the inexperienced newcomer struggles to retain his sanity while turning into a cold blooded killer.

The acting performances are surprisingly good in this movie. According to IMDb, the actors had to go through a real 14 day bootcamp practice, including night patrols etc, before they started filming the movie, and it shows. I think it's actually pretty clever idea to create more authentic look and behaviour to the characters. Charlie Sheen seems to be a bit lost once in a while, but it's probably intended since his character is a "newcomer". He does also a good job as the narrator. The other main characters, Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) and  Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) do great job aswell, and give also very interesting personalities to the characters, other being more compassionate and friendly, and the other a harsh and obstinate psychopath.

Unlike many newer war films, Platoon doesn't have much of bloody gore, severed limbs or blood splatter. And tbh, it doesn't need that. It's still extremely brutal and ruthless, could say it's more brutal than Saving Private Ryan.

It's interesting to see Charlie Sheen in a serious role after seeing so many comedies. In many movie ratings Platoon is considered as one of the best war films ever made. Have to agree, I actually liked it more than Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now.