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 Deleru...