[Dumpster Baby]

I'm not a vet, but I've read enough true accounts and novels to know that just about everything in Platoon actually happened over there. Most bush units weren't as screwed up internally as this one was, but a lot were. It's been said that the most dangerous thing on earth is a 19 year old boy with serious weapons and a license to kill.

I've read first-person accounts of combat where the guy being interviewed would say something like "it's hot, you're tired, you're pissed off, the gooks' eyes are slanty and you just don't like it, so you shoot them".

[tet68]

I thought Hamburger Hill wa better.
A defining Nam pic hasn’t been made yet.

Stone’s ‘Sea of Grass’ was a more realistic treatment.
Tommy Lee jones was excellent, it portrayed the trauma of
survival much better, amazingly his vietnamese wife adapted
while he ended up blowing his brains out naked in a VW bus.

[mdittmar]

I never served.

[Apercu]

I have seen interviews with WW 2 combat vets who said “Saving Private Ryan” was the most realistic combat film ever made followed by Viet Nam war film “Full Metal Jacket”.

[matt1234]

I was not in ‘Nam. But I worked with a guy who claimed to serve with Oliver Stone. This guy said Stone wounded himself and fellow soldiers by accidentally discharging a grenade launcher. Draw your own conclusions.

[sgtyork]

My old platoon sargeant Max (SF, 2 tours in Viet Nam) said Apocalypse Now was just like it.

[brushcop]

I was in the US Navy, sea going that is. BUT, a good friend was an Air Cobra pilot, purple heart, bronze star so he’s been there, done that. I think he’s seen just about every VN era flick produced. His all time favorite for accuracy of details, attitudes, spirit and the amazing perseverence of soldiers in particular is “We Were Soldiers”.

He’s also read the book, which is more complete of course but the film version is tops for him. That’s good enough for me too.

A buddy that was “brown water Navy” (Mekong Delta, riverine patrol—Operation Game Warden, also purple heart, bronze star w/V device) agree with the opinion on “We Were Soliers”, especially the terrible feeling of sudden, random death.

Apocolypse Now was pukesville for him, as well as myself and we were looking anxiously for a Navy flick dealing with riverine patrol combat. Darn! You wanted opinions, ya got ‘em!

[VietVet]

I don’t know what conditions were like at the time and place depicted in the film (every year and every theater were different), but I do know that any NCO who was as clearly unstable as the “bad Sergeant” character would have been pulled from the field in my unit. Reassigned to some rear echelon job before he got himself and his unit killed.

[hinckley buzzard]

The fact that I was a snot nosed, 24 year-old white boy who'd never been in the service and he was a 50 year-old black engineer had nothing to do with it.

Don't succumb to the political BS about VN, for one thing. For another, assume every VN vet had an experience unique to him, and a movie is necessarily a distillation of many lives. I watched "Platoon", back when it came out, with a group of VN vets and met with a group of them afterwards. Most could identify with one character or another but nobody could identify with the story as a whole.

I think it is way past time to be worrying about thirty-year -old movies, and begin to deal with the present crises.

[Clemenza]

My uncle told me that, of all the films he saw, Platoon was the closest to HIS experience on patrol in VN.

I'm STILL waiting for a WWII film that shows it as it REALLY was early in the Pacific Theatre: Incompetant (really poorly trained) junior officers getting themselves and their men killed by the hundreds, even on a destroyer such as the one my grandfather served on. I got news for you folks, WWII wasn't all about "greatness." It was about a bunch of young men, a flaccid middle officer corp, a GREEN junior officer corp, who miraculously managed to get their sh-t together and defeat the two most powerful armies/navies in the world at that time.

[Psycho_Bunny]

All I remember about Platoon was that I turned it off when the score launched into Barber's Adagio for Strings the 67th time.  

Bassoonists always feel left out of some great compositions.  Just about the only glory the insturment sees is in several of Beethoven's Symphonies and Bach's first Brandenburg.  Other than that, you pine to be a violist in the Adagio or a horn player William Tell.  Now I couldn't care less about the Barber.

That idiot movie ruined a perfectly beautiful piece of music for me.

 

[Ieatfrijoles]

I was never in combat, but I was in the Army(197^th Inf) when I saw it with my girlfriend. Thanx for bringing up good times.

[macamadamia]

I remember passing by a movie theater that had a poster like the one above...outside by the entrance. The movie theater stuck a banner to the poster that stretched across the soldier's hands...the banner said "Now Playing."

[advance_copy]

The most important thing to understand about Vietnam is that left-wing dirty hate-America-first rotten commie b@stards undermined our military while it was trying to win the war. They’re doing the same thing today.

[Vince Ferrer]

I am too young to really remember the Vietnam war, but I have thought that Forrest Gump, of all movies, had a pretty good portrayal of the war and the turmoil at home.

[durasell]

Stone was a guy who quit (and/or was thrown out of) Yale to join as a grunt. Everything you need to know about the guy is about Vietnam and where he came from.

[Bigun]

BTW: I completely agree with those who have said that, for them, " We were soldiers" comes closest of any movie I've seen to capturing the REAL Vietnam experience.

[leadpenny]

“The Deer Hunter” - The entire movie is a metaphor for the stupidity that was Vietnam.

“Apocalypse Now” - Nothing in it that actually happened in Vietnam, but an excellent movie for Vietnam Vets who want to be reminded of their individual stories.

“Platoon” - The night fire fight scene depicts the chaos and confusion as close to reality as anything I can imagine. The killing of the old man is a metaphor for My Lai.

“Forrest Gump” - The ambush scene is on par with the night fire fight scene in “Platoon.”

“Full Metal Jacket” - What happened in the first half of the movie in Basic Training is believable. When the story jumps to Vietnam, you can learn more by walking out of the theater.

“Go Tell the Spartans” - Takes place in 64 and the message to me was, we should have seen it coming. Good simple movie.

[Condor51]

Maybe this has been addressed, I didn't read all the posts as I have to get to work, but believe it or not, the now wacky Oliver Stone was a grunt in VN.

He wrote Platoon from his own experiences and the Charlie Sheen character was 'him'.

(An aside maybe Stone is wacky now from smoking all that VN weed???)

[7thson]

I have two brother who were in the military during Viet Nam. One was Army (13 years older than me) and the other Marine (7 years older than me). Both served in Nam. The Army brother spent time in Germany first and then - I think - the last year of four in Nam. He got out in 68. The Marine brother joined in late 67 and was in Nam 68-69. He was a radioman. The Army brother said Platoon was the biggest load of crap he ever saw and if he found himself in a unit like that, he would move heaven and earth to get out and report the people. The Marine brother said it was just like that. So whom do you believe?

I think both are right. I think during the later stages of Viet Nam it became weird like Platoon. The eary stages of Viet Nam were like We Were Soldiers. Also, I guess it depends on where you were and whether you were Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine; in the bush or a REMF.

All just my opinion.