Platoon is a movie where we can see the attitudes and personal hardships that soldiers went through. It's a movie that shows us the supposedly shows us life within a platoon of 30 men, and the conflicts that can spark between the men, and how a whole platoon can be divided. The main character and narrator is Chris Taylor, played by Charlie Sheen, who is a rich, educated young man who unlike most of the other men in his platoon, volunteered to go to Vietnam. He finds himself in amongst a group of disadvantaged, uneducated men, who are only in Vietnam because they have to be.

This is where Taylor's problems start, he is not like the others, and whilst he befriends a few of the men, he finds himself in a personal conflict. He also finds himself wound up in the conflicts of two of his platoon Sergeants, one who he gets along with, and the other who he would much like to kill. Sergeant Elias is a Sergeant who is fair, and gets along with most of the men, although there are those men who think he is too soft, and weak. This brings me to Staff Sergeant Barnes, a mean, brutal and violent Platoon Sergeant who has those who follow him, and those who hate him. These two Sergeants are in a constant conflict throughout the whole movie, well at least until Barnes shoots Elias. In reality, that just doesn't happen, firstly one Sergeant going out into the jungle alone to shoot up the bad guys then only to be shot by someone who is on the same side, that just doesn't happen. In Vietnam, there were always people bickering and arguing within a platoon, but that's where it usually stopped, nobody killed each other. The two Sergeants fighting is a major part of the story in Platoon, without that the story wouldn't have worked out the way it did.

On the cover of the DVD, there is a motto that says "The first casualty of war is innocence", this motto is demonstrated in to movie several times, one example is when they enter a village that they suspect is Viet Cong, they torment and kill villagers, then are ordered to torch the village and round up suspected Viet Cong. These men behaved in a very unprofessional manner and killed potentially innocent people, and torched their homes. I can understand why they did it, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence as it was a matter of their own safety in case the villagers were infact Viet Cong. It wasn't very often that soldiers behaved in the manner that they did at the village, but it was common for platoons to come across VC villages and have to capture Viet Cong. But the NVA and VC committed atrocities which outnumbered the US atrocities one thousand to one.

In this movie, it shows alot of scenes where the troops are moving through the jungle, carrying packs that weigh a ton. These scenes are pretty accurate in the sense that we really did have to carry packs that heavy, we would usually have ammunition to last us at least until we got to base camp, as well as other personal living equipment, as our pack was more or less our portable home. The insects, heat and humidity in the jungle were terrible, as they are depicted in the movie. These scenes are pretty much on target.

Something else that plays a big part in this movie is drug use. There would be quite a few scenes where the men would be back at base camp, in huts smoking marijuana through big, long pipes. This is another inaccuracy of the movie, I know some of the guys would have a few joints whilst we were in a safe zone, but people never went to those extremes. Drug use whilst out in the jungle was definitely not on, anything could happen out there and we depended on each other, therefore had to remain in a state of mind that was not influenced by drugs.

In Platoon, they had men going out into the jungle on wild manhunts for NVA or VC, which in reality did not happen, that was not the attitude of the men and nobody would pull a stunt like that which could potentially jeapardise the mission or the safety of other members of the unit.

Alot of the fighting and contact scenes of this movie are very accurate in relation to the experiences of real soldiers, but alot of other aspects which I have already mentioned are very farfetched, I don't know of alot of platoons who would break out into a civil war, like the one in the movie. All in all, a good movie to watch, some bits accurate, some bits not, however it was a good storyline and I thought it was a good movie to watch.