One of the most visceral and authentic war films ever made.

| Jun 14, 2023

Platoon may not be the best Vietnam war film ever made -- I still prefer both Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket by a healthy margin -- but I wouldn't care to argue with any veteran who states that it's the most honest depiction of that insane skirmish.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 11, 2022

In terms of the day-to-day madness of combat, Stone’s vision is horrifyingly realistic, the reportage of someone who was there.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 31, 2022

This is a great American movie -- easily the most powerful film of the year.

| Aug 23, 2022

I didn't take a single note during the screening of Platoon: It's that engrossing, that overwhelming.

| Aug 23, 2022

It is a terrifying movie, one that will shatter illusions. But that is the heart of Stone's message.

| Aug 23, 2022

It's a powerful, painful, must-see film -- an impassioned and riveting dispatch from the front that's at once a battle cry and a lamentation.

| Aug 23, 2022

There's no self-conscious artistry here, no metaphorical trips up a river into a thickening jungle. Platoon is a clean, direct narrative that may not go to the heart of darkness but does get to the heart of the matter.

| Aug 23, 2022

Exactly as the war it chronicles was conceptually flawed by the chronic problem of fighting 1967's battles by 1944's tactics, so is Platoon flawed by its decision to make 1987's movie by 1957's structure.

| Aug 23, 2022

Extravagantly well acted and passionately directed, it is not a pretty picture. But it may well prove a healing one for Americans who were there or who are beginning to understand and accept the particular heroics of the 27 million Vietnam veterans.

| Aug 23, 2022

Despite the effectiveness of some of its moments, one begins to wish this movie were headed somewhere. Sensitive, intimate performances on the part of every member of a large ensemble cast, however, are enough to keep one watching.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 23, 2022

Platoon marks the channeling of a zealot's rant into artistry of a high caliber.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 23, 2022

Platoon comes closer than the other Vietnam movies to telling the necessary truths of Vietnam, to capturing the camaraderie and suspicion, the indignities and barbarities experienced by the soldiers who fought and died in that dirty big war.

| Aug 23, 2022

This is not a John Wayne war in which glory awaits the gung-ho crusader. There are no heroes, only survivors... The tension of instant death that Stone imparts in his script is accented by the taut camera work of cinematographer Robert Richardson.

| Aug 23, 2022

The time for this film is now. And it deserves comparison with such great anti-war movies as All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory and Grand Illusion.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 23, 2022

Platoon is brutal, vicious, surpassingly ugly -- in a word, realistic. It’s one of those movies that are hard to watch yet, impossible not to watch.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 23, 2022

Outstanding performances, particularly by Berenger and Dafoe, bring the war home in an unforgettable manner.

| Aug 23, 2022

Platoon has the honesty and passion of a work that can only have sprung from experience -- and from the creator's needs to exercise the horrors of the past.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

[Platoon] looks like the real thing, feels like the real thing, sounds like the real thing. And the actors... have been ingeniously chosen for their roles -- they are so right.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 23, 2022

Platoon is a tough and honest film that looks at Vietnam with eyes open wide and with the clear head that such a subject requires. It tells an utterly absorbing story and it delivers a moral as well.

| Aug 23, 2022