Word: platooning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...defend, just their asses; the accompanying music is not Samuel Barber but inane party rock of the '60s like Wooly Bully and Surfin' Bird. In this second section the movie becomes a notebook of anecdotes, always compelling, but rarely propelling the story toward its climax. Unlike Oliver Stone's Platoon, with which it will unfortunately be compared, Kubrick's film does not want to say every last word about Viet Nam. It wants to isolate a time, a place and a disease...
...saga of the civilians' indoctrination into the ways of war is most dramatically portrayed in the struggle of one lazy, overweight recruit named Pyle. His struggle to shed his dependency on jelly doughtnuts is almost comical, with Kubrick showing Pyle absurdly running at the end of the platoon with his pants at his ankles, sucking his thumb. The transformation of Pyle from chubby mama's boy to bloodthirsty marine is an incredulous feat, serving to demonstrate how a hellish eight-week boot camp stay can turn even the meekest of men into "jolly green giants with rifles...
...film lays out Vietnam before the audience in all its scintillating confusion. It does not indulge in the gruesome battles of "Platoon," but it also does not manipulate its audience into feeling terrorized by the silver screen...
When the next round of underground primary ratings emerges through rough consensus, three of the competitors will probably do well for different reasons. Gephardt has plowed Iowa more vigorously than a platoon of farmers and managed to identify himself with an issue -- protectionist measures to cut the trade deficit -- that appeals to labor activists. Even those who disagree with Gephardt's approach concede that he has exploited it shrewdly. Given the fractured nature of the Hart-less field, the support of labor could boost Gephardt to top-tier status, though it may hamper the recent headway he has been making...
Chris Starkmann went to Viet Nam as innocent as the narrator of Platoon. In this powerful novel, the veteran bitterly recalls the death wish of Ulysses: "Would God I, too, had died there . . . I should have had a soldier's burial and praise." Instead, the madness acquired 14 years earlier has been carried home, slowly eroding his marriage, his job and his life. A soldier is most vulnerable when he feels safest, he drunkenly repeats, and in the rough country of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where people have "no possibilities, no place to go," Chris comes to believe...