Music Album Review:'Platoon and Songs from the Era: Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture'

Oliver Stone's 1986 Oscar-winning Platoon is, even after 32 years, one of the best movies about the Vietnam War. Based on Stone's true-life experiences as a young infantryman who served "in-country" with the 25th Infantry Division in 1967, Platoon began the trend of combat films about Vietnam (Hamburger Hill, Charlie 84MoPic) that spanned the late 1980s and paved the way for more realistic combat films about any war, including Saving Private Ryan.

Platoon was, of course, well-acted, directed magnificently and photographed in such a way that viewers left the theater feeling as though they, too, had been "in the bush" for a combat tour of duty. Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, and Tom Berenger created indelible characters in their portrayals of Sgt. Elias, Pvt. Taylor, and Sgt. Barnes, the trinity upon which the tale of Stone's film is centered. But adding its own emotional firepower is the spare but effective score by composer Georges Delerue.

Not that Delerue goes the Williams/Horner/Goldsmith path of composing a wall-to-wall symphonic score with themes and cues to underscore Pvt. Taylor's year of combat and confusion and the various battle sequences in the film. No, Delerue composed some orchestral music, but the album producer only found one original cue worthy of inclusion into this 11-track "compilation" soundtrack album.

 The piece, "Barnes Shoots Elias," is a spooky, atmospheric, almost claustrophobic composition that evokes both the oppressive atmosphere of the jungle and the darkness of Sgt. Barnes' resentment of the free-spirited but disillusioned Sgt. Elias.

Delerue and the music coordinator for Platoon chose Samuel Barber's elegiac Adagio for Strings as the film's signature orchestral "theme." While it is heard throughout the film as a recurring motif (particularly during the main title sequence when Pvt. Taylor arrives in Vietnam and as underscore for the end credits, track 1, "The Village," is heard when the platoon destroys a Vietnamese hamlet in revenge for the killing of one of the GIs by the local Viet Cong.

The Adagio is not played in its entirety; rather, only a fragment of Barber's beautiful but haunting hymn-like piece is played by the Vancouver Symphony, with the boom of explosions and crackling of flames in the background. The Adagio is reprised at the end of the album with, as in the final film, a Martin Sheen voiceover as the older Chris Taylor reflects on his life-changing experiences in Vietnam.

Because the soundtrack is supposed to evoke the time period of the movie's setting, most of the tracks are "songs from the era." They include Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears," an ode to lost love, the conservative anti-hippie "Okie From Muskogee" by country singer Merle Haggard, the psychedelic but riveting "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, and Aretha Franklin's classic "Respect." Other artists featured are the late Otis Redding (with his classic "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" and The Rascals' catchy "Groovin' ."

Although this is not really one of the best soundtrack albums ever, it did introduce me to several songs that I do enjoy ("White Rabbit" and "Groovin' " in particular) and it made me want to find a recording of Samuel Barber's Adagio in its entirety.

Track List

• The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra "The Village" Adagio For Strings   1:47
• Smokey Robinson       Tracks of My Tears  2:57
• Merle Haggard            Okie From Muskogee           3:05
• The Doors       Hello, I Love You      2:13
• Jefferson Airplane       White Rabbit 2:33
• The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra "Barnes Shoots Elias"          3:10
• Aretha Franklin           Respect           2:28
• Otis Redding  (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay      2:45
• Percy Sledge   When a Man Loves a Woman         2:52
• The Rascals     Groovin'         2:31
• The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra            Adagio For Strings    6:53