Platoon
Written by Oliver Stone
Salvador
Written by Oliver Stone and Richard Boyle
Without missing a beat, here I am with my write-up of our
very first double feature! The one-two gut punch of Oliver Stone’s Platoon and Salvador.
Doing these as a double feature makes a lot of sense on
paper. Both movies are (largely) from the same voice, and both deal with very
similar ideas. I guess the only problem was that, man, these movies are heavy. Which is to be expected from
Stone, and especially young Stone, but that didn’t make it any easier to breeze
through these. Had there been, say, two Pixar movies or two Woody Allen movies
nominated in a single year, things would be simpler. But we made our choice and
pushed through 5+ hours of war is hell, man’s inherent deceptive nature and the
ostensible evils of the men pulling the strings.
Which isn’t to say these are bad movies. Of course they’re
not. Platoon is pretty much canonized
as one of the all-time great war movies and lives up to that reputation, while Salvador really took me by surprise. Not
a movie I knew anything about going into it. So, no, not bad movies. Just tough
movies.
Let’s get started. I’m a little out of practice, so I’ll
be blunter than usual. But I think bluntness is appropriate. We are talking
about Oliver Stone, after all. Both movies waste no time sending their heroes
to hell. The new recruits in Platoon are
immediately greeted with body bags, no doubt containing the troops they’re
there to replace. And Boyle and Jim Belushi (!) are running into trouble as
soon as they enter Salvador. And things never really get any better.
Platoon is
fucking oppressive, man. Everywhere they turn, things are awful. The same is
true of Salvador, but there’s a bit
more levity to that one. Boyle is a pretty fun character, particularly in the
first couple of acts. It’s great for breaking up the tension, and seeing him
begin to take things more seriously, and think of others is a solid character
arc. It also helps that the character is strong enough that we don’t need any
voiceover. I wrote in my notes for Platoon
that voiceover was “a necessary evil,” but I’m not sure I agree with that.
It gives us insight into Chris’s psyche, I guess, but so do his actions and his
relationships with the rest of his team. All the voiceover accomplished for me
was it kept me wondering if there’s a specific reason he’s writing to his
grandmother and not his parents, like is that one of the true-life details from
Stone’s time in Vietnam?
If Salvador is
about a man learning to become less selfish by witness the horrors around him, Platoon is about men becoming corrupted
by doing the same. Boyle grows a soul by the end, doing everything he can to
get Maria to safety. But Barnes kills Elias, and then Chris kills Barnes. It’s
interesting. Everyone in Platoon kind
of just gives up by the end. They’re resigned to their fate. None of them were
really there because they believed in the mission in the first place, and now
they’re just trying to survive and get home by any means necessary. Boyle, by
contrast, begins going above and beyond to get himself and his friends out of
there, which gives us a couple of glorious scenes of James Woods yelling at ineffectual
military top brass. Stone can’t even hide his contempt for these people. One of
them is dressed like the bad guys from Revenge
of the Nerds. It’s great.
As far as writing itself goes, I think Salvador is a stronger script. I got to
know the individual characters and their unique struggles better. There’s that
levity I mentioned, and the tension never stops going up. I kept thinking, “how
is Boyle going to get out this one!” like I was the narrator of Dukes of
Hazzard or something, but I think that says something about how much I liked
the characters and how invested I became in these seemingly unwinnable situations.
Platoon is
almost invariably the better overall movie, though. There’s a reason it took
home Best Director and Best Picture, if not our category, and why it’s endured
close to thirty years later. It’s packed to the brim with iconic imagery… the
way the movie bookends with Chris getting off and then on a helicopter, looking
at all the casualties of war, and of course the death of Elias. If there’s a
WatchMojo countdown of the “Top 10 Movie Deaths,” that one is in there. I’m
just not sure how much of that is writing.
I did really appreciate how natural the banter and comradery between the troops
felt, though. It actually reminded me of the Marines from Aliens, which was released the same year.
If nothing else, marathoning these movies made me pine
for the days when Oliver Stone was at the top off his game. He’s about as
subtle as a jackhammer, but he’s uncompromising and definitely has a point of
view that he wants to get out. It’s a shame that the same guy who made these
movies took such a soft approach to World
Trade Center and W. Maybe he’ll
come back to us one day.
1986 rankings thus far!
1)
Salvador
2)
My Beautiful Laundrette
3)
Platoon
4)
Crocodile Dundee
Let’s finally get 1986 over with by tackling our second
Woody movie!
