RogerBW's Blog

1986 war, dir. Oliver Stone, Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger: IMDb / allmovie. Turns out war isn't as bad as you thought; it's worse.

Which maybe needed to be said more in 1986, when Vietnam was still the latest large-scale war that America had been involved in and people were still trying to talk it up as a victorious military betrayed by politicians (stabbed in the back, one might say), than it does now. I mean, then I didn't and now I do know far too many details about the massacre at Mỹ Lai – not that it was a secret in the 1980s, but I think it wasn't as much in general consciousness. Or maybe I'm just a weirdo.

But this was clearly a very personal film for Stone, originating with the unproduced screenplay Break which he wrote just after he got back from Vietnam in 1968. It's therefore interesting to me that it's so sharply bookended by Chris Taylor arriving and leaving the war zone: we don't know who he was before (other than a student who volunteered), and we don't know who he'll be afterwards. This is just the story of his war, and while he gets some personality of his own he's clearly also an everyman, more reacting to the situation than imposing his own will on it.

And the setting is perfect: one sort of Hell, very clearly, is patrolling through the jungle knowing that you could be ambushed at any moment… forever.

Where to me it falls down is in making the other two major characters archetypes too: Sergeant Elias who's at peace with himself and trying to be a good person, and Sergeant Barnes who's become the mad-dog killer that the war seems to demand. (Though even he is shown to have some virtues – it's Barnes who understands and resolves what's going on with the misdirected artillery barrage.) They're clearly meant to represent the good and bad paths you can take, and maybe it's a bit too dualistic to feel at the same time like a story of real people.

While the Vietnam cliché as seen in something like Aliens is of utterly incompetent officers, I think Lt Wolfe is shown with some sympathy here: sure, the situation is clearly impossible, but I don't get to tell the General that, and so you don't get to tell me either.

The firefights are confusing, but I wonder whether they're a bit too confusing: realistic, perhaps, but as viewers we do want to know that this guy was accidentally shot by his own side while that guy was shot by the enemy. Sheen's red bandanna is at times the only visible identifying feature.

But the scene that hit me most powerfully was the aftermath of the climactic battle. Here is normality come back (or as normal as it gets), but Taylor just isn't ready yet to return from the mental places he's had to go.

Not a film to love, but definitely a film I'm very glad to have seen.

As usual if you want more of my witterings you should listen to Ribbon of Memes.