Platoon is a 1986 American war film written and directed by Oliver Stone, starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Keith David, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Forest Whitaker, and Johnny Depp.

Stone wrote the screenplay based upon his experiences as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam, to counter the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne's The Green Berets.

[4] Upon its release, Platoon received critical acclaim for Stone's directing and screenplay, the cinematography, battle sequences' realism, and the performances of Sheen, Dafoe, and Berenger.

Upon his return to base from the aid station, Taylor bonds with Elias and his circle of marijuana smokers while remaining distant from Barnes and his more hard-edged followers.

When the platoon returns to base, company commander Captain Harris warns he will pursue a court-martial if he finds out an illegal killing occurred, leaving Barnes concerned that Elias will testify against him.

On their next patrol, the platoon is ambushed and pinned down in a firefight, and the situation is worsened when Wolfe accidentally directs an artillery strike onto his own unit before Barnes calls it off.

While the platoon is extracting via helicopter, they see a mortally wounded Elias emerge from the jungle being chased by NVA soldiers, who eventually kill him.

The platoon is sent back to the front line to maintain defensive positions, where Taylor shares a foxhole with another soldier named Francis.

During the battle, much of the platoon, including Wolfe and most of Barnes' followers, are killed, while an NVA sapper destroys the battalion headquarters in a suicide attack.

Taylor regains consciousness the following morning, picks up an enemy rifle, and finds Barnes slowly crawling along the ground.

Overwhelmed, Taylor breaks down sobbing as he flies over multiple craters full of corpses, narrating how the war has changed him forever.

The seeds of what would become Platoon began as early as 1968, months after Stone had completed his own tour of duty fighting in Vietnam.

Stone first wrote a screenplay called Break, a semi-autobiographical account detailing his experiences with his parents and his time in the Vietnam War.

Stone claims that during that time, Sidney Lumet was to have helmed the film with Al Pacino slated to star had there been studio interest.

[8] Stone responded by attempting to break into mainstream direction via the easier-to-finance horror genre, but The Hand failed at the box office, and he began to think Platoon would never be made.

Because De Laurentiis had already spent money sending Stone to the Philippines to scout for locations, he decided to keep control of the film's script until he was repaid.

[12] Denzel Washington expressed interest in playing the role of Elias,[13] a character Stone said was based on a soldier he knew in Vietnam.

[14] Stone confirmed in a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly that Mickey Rourke, Emilio Estevez and Kevin Costner were all considered for the part of Barnes.

Dale Dye, who played Captain Harris, the commander of Company B, is a U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran who also served as the film's technical advisor.

Exterior shooting began on the island of Luzon in the Philippines in February 1986, although the production was almost canceled because of the political upheaval in the country, due to then-president Ferdinand Marcos.

[10] Upon arrival in the Philippines, the cast was sent on an intensive training course, during which they had to dig foxholes and were subjected to forced marches and nighttime "ambushes," which used special-effects explosions.

Stone said that he was trying to break them down, "to mess with their heads so we could get that dog-tired, don't give a damn attitude, the anger, the irritation ... the casual approach to death".

[26] In 2018 actor Paul Sanchez, who played Doc in the movie, made a documentary about the making of the film, entitled Platoon: Brothers in Arms.

During a scene in the "Underworld", the soldiers sing along to "The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, which was also featured in the film's trailer.

[31] In its seventh weekend of release, the film expanded from 214 theatres to 590 and became number one at the United States box office with a gross of $8,352,394.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Informed by director Oliver Stone's personal experiences in Vietnam, Platoon forgoes easy sermonizing in favor of a harrowing, ground-level view of war, bolstered by no-holds-barred performances from Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe.

[45] In his New York Times review, Vincent Canby described Platoon as "possibly the best work of any kind about the Vietnam War since Michael Herr's vigorous and hallucinatory book Dispatches.

[46] "The film has been widely acclaimed," Pauline Kael admitted, "but some may feel that Stone takes too many melodramatic shortcuts, and that there's too much filtered light, too much poetic license, and too damn much romanticized insanity ...

[49][50][51] Some veterans accused Stone of covering up war crimes he had himself witnessed as a soldier by failing to report them to his superiors, given the film was based on his autobiographical experiences.