by Chris Marshall:
Before Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen became members of the
Cleveland Indians in Major League, they
fought together in Vietnam, and I think it’s safe to say their relationship was
slightly more contentious in Platoon.
Berenger, as the sinister Sgt. Barnes, is the platoon leader, while Sheen,
playing the tastefully-named Chris, is a neophyte recent arrival to the war.
The film is mostly based on Chris’s experiences,
particularly on his relationships with Barnes and Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). In
many ways, the main thematic element of the plot is similar to Oliver Stone’s
next film, Wall Street. A character
played by Charlie Sheen is forced to choose between the “good” father figure
(Dafoe here, Martin Sheen in Wall Street)
and the “bad” one (Berenger, Michael Douglas).
The Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Zizek argues that the
problem with Oliver Stone’s films is that the message he wants to deliver is
obscured by the way he goes about it. Specifically, he argues that even though
we are supposed to disagree with Berenger’s and Douglas’s tactics in the two
films, that’s not what actually happens because the villains are the most
dynamic, charismatic characters in the movies.
