Platoon (1986 Film) - And Songs From The Era

 (28 customer reviews)

Oliver Stone's 1986 Oscar-winning Platoon is, even after 18 years, still 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 all 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...Read more

This CD has some enjoyable songs which represent the era and the soldiers of Vietnam extremely well, such as "Hello, I Love You" and "Tracks of My tears". The one track of original score ("Barnes Shoots Elias") is excellent and very creepy and the stereo gunshot takes you completely by surprise at the end!The sound quality of most of these songs is not the best, but still listenable, (this is due to the songs being recorded years ago on old analog equipment, as is explained on the CD cover). It's a cheap and cheerful release, but there is a major spoiler that has dragged my rating of the CD down from five stars to only two......and that is "Adagio for Strings". The CD treats this beautiful music horribly! For a start, the last part of the song (the reprise of the main theme after the high-pitched crescendo) has been cut off from the track and slapped onto the start of the CD as a separate track called "The Village", where the music is drowned out by sounds of fire and...Read more

Ever since I saw this film, when I was young, the soundtrack never left me.'Adagio for Strings' has got to be THE best song ever written with more emotion than anything that you could compare it to including the beatles. Its took me tens years to find it and now it's all mine...