Platoon Themes

Platoon is a movie about the Vietnam War, sure, but it goes about the whole war thing just a little bit differently than most movies. While the battle between the NVA enemy troops and the United St...

Platoon is a political movie alright, but in a very, nontraditional sense. We're not talking Washington D.C. politics—although that is mentioned—but rather military politics. It's like this: L...

War is death, plain and simple. While Platoon definitely shows a lot of the big sleep, it also explores the ways in which different characters face of the reality of death in the first place. The f...

Platoon isn't about mom and dad, but about a group of brothers—the platoon itself. They are a brotherhood if there ever was one, a brotherhood that is ultimately shattered by the events of the wa...

For the members of the platoon, reality is difficult to process. How does one, for example, make sense of guys rationalizing killing each other, or of death and destruction that surrounds them? How...