Movies

Is there a deeper, more queasy thrill in American war movies than Oliver Stone’s Platoon? Here, the old Hollywood war drum—once a loopy rhythm of self-sacrifice and pyrotechnic heroics—gets drowned out by the thump of jungle rot, by the insectile chitter of paranoia, and above all, by a sense that Vietnam will never release those it swallows. Released in 1986—ten years after the helicopter rotors beat their retreat from Saigon—this is a film that refuses to let the audience clap themselves on the back; Stone, carrying the scars and the nightmares of his own tour, rewrites the Book of War as a catalogue of wounds, psychological and otherwise.