Yelnick McWawa said:
My dad's a Vietnam vet and thinks that movie is hot garbage.
His Vietnam war movie of choice is Hamburger Hill.
Yep. Many vets do. Here is why.
Oliver Stone's Platoon, while certainly a very well made, well acted, well written film, basically compiles every negative stereotype and situation from the Vietnam War and sells itself as the normal experience of the average infantryman during the conflict. Which is just not historically accurate. There is no question many of these things happened but for all of them to happen to a single infantry platoon is pretty preposterous. I mean, look at what one single platoon faced in that movie:
incompetent, cowardly officer
rampant drug and alcohol abuse
raping of civilians
murdering of civilians including what was meant to be a simulation of the Mi Lia massacre
fratricide (both unintentional and straight up murder)
illegal incursion in to Cambodia
self inflicted wounds to get out of combat duty, etc
Did all of things happen? Of course. Likeliness that a single platoon would have experienced all this, very little. And I say that as a fan of a lot of Stone's work.