Blood and Guts

...On the other hand, their deadly clash does lend an impressive tension to the film, and it is the portion most brilliantly directed and conceived...

...He becomes most involved when he can place his actors in a wideopen field...

...intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, and thus represent a reaction to attitudes current in the late '60s and '70s...

...Without any real plot to speak of, Platoon portrays the daily life of its subjects in the early years of the Vietnam War...

...indeed, on one occasion Barnes is referred to as Ahab...

...If you want esthetic validity, see Platoon...

...As Chris passes from innocence to experience in the course of the film, we watch the entire outfit at rest, at play, laboring at menial tasks, steeling itself for battle, and in the thick of combat...

...Later, as Elias is making his way back to the camp alone through a deep forest, after bravely fighting off a whole group of the enemy single-handedly, Barnes suddenly confronts him and, in a truly dramatic moment, shoots him in the heart...

...In fact, Stone (whose recent movie Salvador was critical of U.S...

...especially memorable is one that has a helicopter noiselessly passing over the beautifully rich countryside as fighting rages below in graceful slow motion, accompanied by the lush score of Samuel Barber...

...Although his narration in letters to his grandmother forms the frame of the story, he often drifts toward the periphery of what is in fact an ensemble cast comprising some dozen impressive performances...

...Although we would not expect the writers and director Terry Leonard to depict the activities of terrorists sympathetically, it will suffice to say that if Arabs grew their mustaches long, they'd be twirling them in this film...

...Battles, often shot from the air, are invariably superb...

...On their very different levels, Platoon and Death Before Dishonor are discussing the same perennial subject: the role of force and violence in the lives of men...

...By allowing Barnes to explain his position to Chris and the others, Stone seems to be suggesting it is worthy of consideration...

...Attention is focused on one young man, Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), who has idealistically dropped out of college to fight for his country alongside other young men lower on the social ladder, but he by no means dominates the action...

...But if the tension of the episode and the poetic nobility of Elias are profoundly moving, their philosophical import is negligible...

...The distinction Stone evokes is Melvillian...

...Platoon, written and directed by Oliver Stone, approaches sublimity by reducing the whole Vietnamese conflict to a character study of a single U.S...

...Had this level been sustained throughout, Platoon would have been as great as many people seem to believe it is...

...They are soon preyed upon by an underground terrorist organization that blows up the American Embassy, and takes as prisoners the top-ranking American officer on the island (Brian Keith) and his young assistant...

...Imperfections aside, parts of it are simply standard, and even the outstanding components have problems—as the struggle between Barnes and Elias shows...

...Were we to suppose there are some 20 great films in the history of cinema, Platoon would not be one of them...

...The principal action consists in the Sergeant's bold efforts to get them back...

...Death Before Dishonors well done, in the sense that everything is clearly professional and the calculations of what will make the movie sell appear to be infallible...

...And though it is true that the slightly affected, college-Englishcourse tone the script sometimes assumes (as in Chris' letters to his grandmother) does not detract much, it does not add much either...

...The artistic and spiritual aims of Platoon are far worthier than those of Apocalypse Now, yet its weaknesses are precisely the reverse of those that beset Francis Ford Coppola's film: Where Apocalypse suffered from an unsuccessful conjunction of diverse and ill-fitting episodes, Platoon suffers—albeit to a much lesser degree—from a sense of sameness...

...The excursus begins in a village suspected of helping the Vietcong...

...In terms of its individual scenes, Platoon's cinematography ranges from the nondescript to the very good...

...Nevertheless, what we are evidently faced with is a sick personality—deranged, we may charitably suppose, in the heat of battle—pitted against one that is rational, humane, yet by no means quixotic...

...Each is a success in its own category...

...What surprised me—but not others more familiar with this sort of enterprise—was that the beautiful photographer (Joanna Pacula) who seems to be working with the terrorists is actually a spy from the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, which finally links up with the Marines to destroy the common enemy...

...Beautiful and effective camera work and editing are turned on when the director feels inspired, and at other points his interest clearly flags...

...fighting unit...

...Both display a willingness to reconsider positively U.S...

...Granted, the opportunities for scenic variety are limited because the action takes place in the open fields of Vietnam and Cambodia...

...Something about the Barnes-Elias segment gives the impression of an unnecessary striving to realize the Great American Novel in cinematic terms...

...Still, the two films are as different as the sublime and the ridiculous...

...Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger) and a few of the younger platoon members—who give the impression of having been street toughs in their civilian lives—are eager to shoot all the inhabitants and burn their homes down to the ground...

...Much of Platoon is devoted to an episode that has little to do with the rest of the action, despite what director Stone may wish us to believe...

...The acting is also superior, particularly in the main roles played by Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger...

...but a more fully articulated structure would have relieved the visual repetitiousness and impression of arbitrary arrangement...

...in cramped quarters he does not do so well...

...Death Before Dishonor, directed by Terry J. Leonard, pays a thrilling yet facile tribute to patriotism and the American way that almost succeeds in making them appear fatuous...

...A pack of slimy, smelly child molesters, they are either brutally direct or reptilian in their subterfuge...

...But appropriately, no one actor or set of actors stands decisively above the rest in the platoon—the ensemble equals more than the sum of each performer's contribution...

...His irrational hatred of Elias—like Ahab's hatred for the whale, or Claggert's for Billy Budd—is supposed to link up with more universal issues that set the realist apart from the idealist...

...Set in a country called Jemal, it features a group of Marines, headed by a charismatic Gunnery Sergeant (Fred Dryer), who have been assigned to help out the Jemali Armed Forces— as observers, it is emphasized...

...it is merely to note that while this film is an excellent depiction of men at war, ultimately it has little to do with Vietnam and the conflict there need not enter our assessment of its creativity...

...Unless the viewer seeks something that neither had any intention of providing, he will come away from both quite satisfied...

...Except in two scenes in the Vietnamese village, the enemy in Platoon is literally faceless—he remains in shadow, or camouflage, or in the thick foliage of the forest...

...Death Before Dishonor is an action-film in every sense of the term—cars, buildings, people, and animals get themselves blown up from start to finish, and in the rare moments when the gore subsides one has the edgy conviction that it will soon resume...

...The deeply moral Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe) comes to the villagers' defense, however, and throws a punch at the clearly unbalanced Barnes...

...The prominence of the Barnes-Elias conflict, and of similar incidents on a lesser scale, raises questions about a good deal that has been said concerning Platoon...

...It hardly matters, therefore, that the acting is poor, the plot is predictable, the dialogue inane...

...When Barnes overhears them discussing it, his defense is scripted so that we are to understand the conflict between the two sergeants went deeper than their personal differences...

...From the very first moments of the film you know precisely what is going to happen: The Americans will come out ahead, and the terrorists will wind up blown to bits...

...Several young platoon members, including Chris, figure out what has happened...

...involvement in Central America) avoids the ideological issues altogether by giving centralità to the psychological conditions of two dozen men in extreme circumstances...

...It has been praised as the first mature cinematic assessment of Vietnam, guilty neither of jingoism nor of facile rejection of the whole enterprise...

...For all of its excellence, too, Stone's film has its flaws...

...If Platoon seeks to raise questions, Death Before Dishonor is happy to provide the answers...

...The larger issues, related to retaining one's humanity in circumstances of extreme brutality, are addressed with a sobriety and force probably unsurpassed in American film, inviting parallels with Jean Renoir'sLaGrandelllusion, and Akira Kurosawa's best film, Yojimbo...

...Even the Indochina setting is played down, especially compared with a film like Apocalypse Now, which exploited the exotic conditions of the fighting to the fullest...

...When it comes to blood and guts, Death Before Dishonor makes Platoon look timid and dithering...

...That is not meant as a criticism...