Platoon Page #4

Synopsis: Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) leaves his university studies to enlist in combat duty in Vietnam in 1967. Once he's on the ground in the middle of battle, his idealism fades. Infighting in his unit between Staff Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), who believes nearby villagers are harboring Viet Cong soldiers, and Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), who has a more sympathetic view of the locals, ends up pitting the soldiers against each other as well as against the enemy.
Genre: Drama, War
Production: Orion Pictures
  Won 4 Oscars. Another 19 wins & 14 nominations.
 
IMDB:
8.1
Metacritic:
92
Rotten Tomatoes:
89%
R
Year:
1986
120 min
1,319 Views


BIG HAROLD:

Tricky b*tch, reason you gimme dat turkey loaf is

nobody else can eat that sh*t 'cept me so don't start

your game playing with me Junior.

They're both black, Junior with huge goggle eyes and a face of

pimples and pockmarks, his teeth yellowed and decayed, some of

them missing. Harold is about twice his size, about 250 pounds,

a baby huey concentrating real hard on preparing his stove to eat

with.

JUNIOR:

Youse a pig man. I hope Manny get dat laundry gig

for' you do.

BIG HAROLD:

De fool think he's gonna get it but he ain't known

for his thinking.

JUNIOR:

He's a fool alright but you a bigger fool. Hey,

whiteboy, watcha waiting for - dat hole ain't gonna

dig itself ...

Chris looks up, continues working, as Junior chuckles.

JUNIOR (CONT'D)

Hey Taylor, you don't know it but I saved your ass

today. I killed a sh*t-eating dog.

(laughing)

BIG HAROLD:

(getting up)

That reminds me, I gotta take a sh*t.

JUNIOR:

You gonna wipe your ass dis time?

BIG HAROLD:

Yeah if you let me have your shirt.

CHRIS:

(VOICE OVER, as he digs)

Somebody once wrote Hell is the impossibility of

Reason. That's what this place feels like. I hate

it already and it's only been a week. Some goddamn

week, grandma ...

(checking his raw blisters)

... the hardest thing I think I've ever done is to go

on point, 3 times this week - I don't even know what

I'm doing. A gook could be standing 3 feet in front

of me and I wouldn't know it, I'm so tired. We get

up at 5 a.m., hump all day, camp around 4 or 5 p.m.,

dig foxhole, eat, then put out an all-night ambush or

a 3-man listening post in the jungle. It's scary

cause nobody tells me how to do anything cause I'm

new and nobody cares about the new guys, they don't

even want to know your name. The unwritten rule is a

new guy's life isn't worth as much cause he hasn't

put his time in yet - and they say if you're gonna

get killed in the Nam it's better to get it in the

first few weeks, the logic being: you don't suffer

that much. I can believe that ... If you're lucky

you get to stay in the perimeter at night and then

you pull a 3-hour guard shift, so maybe you sleep 3-4

hours a night, but you don't really sleep ... I don't

think I can keep this up for a year, grandma - I

think I've made a big mistake coming here ...

As he speaks, we cut around to various shots of the platoon

members on the perimeter - shaving, eating, cooking, playing, etc

...

EXT. PLATOON PC - NIGHT

Towards the end of this voice over, we cut to Sgt. BARNES moving

towards the PLATOON PC. A powerful face, a quiet, angry fixed

stare, a thick trimmed moustache that helps conceal a network of

plastic surgery grafts and scars. The distortion from the jaw up

the left side of his face to his forehead, punctuated by a severe

indentation above the left eye where a bullet once penetrated his

skull.

Rate this script:4.3 / 3 votes

Oliver Stone

William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Stone came to public prominence between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s for writing and directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had participated as an infantry soldier. Many of Stone's films primarily focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such that they were considered contentious at the times of their releases. more…

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Submitted on July 04, 2016

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