I first heard of this movie in comparison to Full Metal Jacket. They seem to be the two big Vietnam War movies, and they both kick ass. However, both movies are totally different.
Full Metal Jacket is full of great quotes, while Platoon seems to have only a scant few. Full Metal Jacket has a truly low kill count, while in Platoon there's plenny of shootin' and dyin'. Charlie Sheen gets a buttload of kills, while in Full Metal Jacket neither Joker nor Animal Mother get any (it sounds weird when I say it, I know). Speaking of Charlie Sheen...
Okay, something happened to this movie for me when the two main characters were "the guy from Hot Shots" and "the guy from Spider-Man." Yes, I know that Platoon came out way before either of those movies, but that's what it seemed like for me.
Right, back to the movie. The plot was cool, and seemed to be realistic, at least to me. Well, maybe the fight between the two sergeants was a bit overdone, and as usual the VC totally sucked, but both of those things were very important to the plot. The plot itself was very cool and well worth watching. Yea, I guess it's kind of like the Full Metal Jacket plot, but the way the two movies go about it is totally different.
You get to see a lot more Vietnam-ish action in Platoon than in Full Metal Jacket. While in Full Metal Jacket (that's it, that got lame, it's FMJ from now on) the fighting happens mostly in burned-out cities. When you think 'Nam you think jungle fighting, and it's jungle fighting you get in Platoon. There's one more thing you think of when you think Vietnam: napalm. There was a total lack of napalm in FMJ, while Platoon has a very big and special effects-heavy napalm strike. Points definitely for Platoon.
Unfortunately a lot of the characters were lamer in Platoon than in FMJ. The three main characters had some kind of character development, but the black characters were just "black grunt" (without the coolness value of Eightball) and Bunny (I think that's what his name was) was just a war-mongering, ignorant white guy (without the coolness value of Animal Mother).
Also, FMJ didn't have some totally pointless scenes where they sit around getting doped up. I think this was supposed to be part of Charlie Sheen's loss of innocence and his being accepted as a real soldier, but to me it was just the stereotypical "potheads get the new guy high and laugh at him" scene.
Don't get me wrong, Platoon totally kicks ass. In some ways, it's better than FMJ. It's totally worth a watch; I think that every war-movie fan should own a copy of it. And if you're reading this and haven't seen it yet, I think it's time you got your ass in gear and went out and watched some Platoon.