Plot introduction

This story was told by American soldier Crystal, who wrote to his grandmother. 1967, 19-year-old Crystal is still a childlike college student. He gave up his studies and flew to Saigon with other American soldiers on the C- 130 transport plane.

After arriving in Vietnam, he was incorporated into an infantry platoon to perform tasks in the tropical jungle adjacent to the Cambodian border. Taylor's infantry platoon has all kinds of people. Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias had the greatest influence on Taylor. They are good friends and fought side by side in Vietnam for many years, but they have completely different views on the war. As a result of dealing with death every day, Barnes' heart became extremely cold and almost became a crazy killing machine. On the other hand, elias has not lost his mind. He believes that even in a cruel war, we should abide by the necessary code of conduct and not kill innocent people indiscriminately. Both of them influenced Taylor with their own ideas, while Taylor wandered between them, trying to figure out what the war was all about. The film specifically shows the four battles that Crystal participated in. Taylor's first patrol was one night when they were ambushed by Vietnamese troops. Taylor was stunned to see a recruit lying beside him. When they entered a Vietnamese village the next morning, they saw an American soldier hanging from a tree. The whole platoon is crazy. After entering the village, he killed everyone he saw. Chris also pointed his gun at a Vietnamese who was so scared that there were a row of bullets at his feet. Barnes ordered the flamethrower to burn the whole village and slaughter the villagers crazily. Elias remained calm and tried to dissuade Barnes' atrocities. Because of this incident, the two men fought and the relationship was very tense. Barnes was even more miserable because Elias reported the situation to his superior.

On one occasion, this platoon was ambushed by the Vietnamese army in the dense forest. Elias rushed into the enemy's rear alone, while Taylor and another soldier covered the fire. After a fierce battle, Barnes heard the news and ordered Taylor to retreat with another wounded soldier on his back, but he sneaked into the jungle, pointed his gun at Elias and fired two shots in succession. Barnes walked out of the jungle and bumped into Taylor, who had just returned. Taylor asked about Elias' whereabouts, but Barnes quickly covered it up and pulled Taylor straight to the rescue helicopter. When the helicopter slowly lifted off and passed through a jungle, Taylor suddenly found Elias, who was covered in blood, running wildly in the jungle, with dozens of Vietnamese soldiers running after him. Elias finally fell to the ground and died of his injuries. Taylor turned painfully and stared at Barnes, who turned and looked out of the window. In a bigger battle, the status of the United States has declined. The us air force strafed and bombed the lost position. Barnes tried to kill Tyler in the chaos. Just then, a bomb fell and both of them lost consciousness. When they woke up, Barnes ordered Taylor to find a military doctor. Taylor pointed the gun at Barnes and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The battle was over, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. The injured Taylor left the battlefield by helicopter. At this moment, his thoughts were confused, as if he had just woken up from a nightmare.

[Edit this paragraph] Related comments

Comment in one sentence

Pai has gone beyond the scope of the film, making people feel that they have been to Vietnam and never want to go again.

Steven Allan Spielberg

Its advantage is that it tells us that movies are not always eager to escape from reality or distort history. Sometimes it reflects the truth.

Boston globe

An excellent film.

Woody Allen

Film background and comments

Pai is the masterpiece of oliver stone, a famous American director. The film won four awards: best film, best director, best editing and best sound effect in the 59th Academy Awards from 65438 to 0987. In addition, Pai also won three Golden Globes for best film, best director and best actor. The movie's box office income in three months reached 1 billion dollars. Neither the production company nor the director himself expected to achieve such benefits and repercussions.

Oliver stone wrote Pai according to his own personal experience. After the film came out, it was widely welcomed by all walks of life. Many people think that this film truly reflects the actual situation of the Vietnam War. This sense of reality undoubtedly stems from oliver stone's war experience and his faithful review of this experience. The plot of Pai is very simple. Oliver stone didn't preach anything, and he didn't resort to the popular movie stunts at that time. He just made the movie vividly reproduce the wartime scene. Here, the director's application of film skills is excellent.

The film tells the story in the first person of Chris. At the beginning of the film, the photographer's unique treatment of light exposed the audience to the dazzling and scorching environment in Vietnam. When the helicopter landed, the airflow blew away the plastic sheets on the ground, revealing the bodies of American soldiers lined up below; A bomb fell, and the man talking and laughing suddenly lost an arm, but his smile was still on his face.

Oliver stone truly recreates the Vietnam War scene, giving people the feeling of being there. In order to achieve the real effect, oliver stone not only carefully arranged the film language, but also put forward requirements for the actors. The film was shot in the Philippines, which took seven weeks to complete and cost $6 million. In order to make the actors feel real, Si Tong let them live in a strict military camp in the Philippine jungle for two weeks. After personal experience, the actor's performance is very vivid. When the film is shown, the audience even has the feeling of being there. Realism is one of the reasons for the success of the film, and another outstanding feature of the film is that it mercilessly depicts the madness and chaos of this war and shows how it makes people lose their minds. Other Vietnam War movies often have strong stories, but in front of oliver stone's camera, Vietnam is a killing place full of painful memories. The Vietnam War left great physical and mental harm to Americans, but oliver stone mercilessly uncovered this scar, which is a painful reflection. In fact, the center of the film is not the horrible killing between Americans and Vietnamese, but the killing between brothers and comrades. This makes the film more reflective.

Pai won the Oscar for best film and oliver stone won the title of best director. For him, this is a matter of course.

[Edit this paragraph] behind-the-scenes production

About movies

Pai is the masterpiece of oliver stone, a famous American director. The film won four awards: best film, best director, best editing and best sound effect in the 59th Academy Awards from 65438 to 0987. In addition, Pai won three Golden Globes for Best Film, Director and Actor awarded by hollywood foreign press association.

Shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, Si Tong raised money everywhere for filming Wild Pai, and too many studios refused to invest on the grounds of being "too cruel" or "too depressed". A few years later, although the film was shot with the financial support of Helmholtz Film Company in Britain, Hollywood still didn't take it seriously, and even the Olian company that distributed it was not sure whether it was successful: it was too documentary, and no big stars participated in the performance. At first, platoon was only shown in six cinemas. Unexpectedly, the film caused a strong response after its premiere, and the audience talked about it in succession. The introductions of various newspapers are also vast. A month and a half later, the number of cinemas increased to 600, and the venue was full, and the box office income in three months reached 1 100 million US dollars. It is unexpected for the production company and the director to get such benefits and repercussions. Si Tong worked hard for several years to get a sentence: Pai is by far the best Vietnam War film.

Perspective and theme

Platoon tells the story of an innocent recruit who was incorporated into the infantry. In the process of carrying out tasks with other soldiers, he quickly understood a cruel reality: the only reason to fight is actually to find a way to keep himself alive. The film was created according to oliver stone's own personal experience, without any preaching or resorting to popular movie stunts, but only made the film truly reproduce the wartime scene. The film tells the story in the first person, and a lot of film language is given to the picture: when the helicopter landed, the airflow blew away the plastic sheets on the ground, revealing the bodies of American soldiers lying below; The bomb fell from the sky, and the laughing people suddenly lost an arm, and the smile was still on their faces ... The creepy realism made this movie. Many viewers, especially veterans who participated in the Vietnam War, think that the film truly reflects the actual situation of the Vietnam War.

Different from "Apocalypse Now", the film does not focus on rendering the destructiveness of war, nor does it focus on portraying superman heroes like "First Blood", but it has a strong sense of introspection. War makes people lose their minds. The most terrible thing is not the killing between Americans and Vietnamese, but the killing between comrades. As for the Vietnam War, the conclusion of the film is that Americans defeated themselves, or that the contradiction of American culture itself led to the failure of this war.

In 2006, Si Tong relived "Wild Platoon" at Cannes Film Festival. Although the Iraq war is still going on, this film, which won four Oscars, including the Best Film Award and the Director Award, has been forgotten by many people. In an interview with the Associated Press, Si Tong said, "It's really a shame, because you made these films, and you want people to be more fully aware of what war is. This film did this, which shocked the whole world at that time. This film has changed our careers. However, 20 years later, only 10 and 15 were accurate, and people's views on war began to change again. People forgot the disasters of the war, and they looked at the problem from the standpoint of militarism ... until the Iraq war broke out. "

executant

Charlie Sheen, the leading actor, made a blockbuster with his platoon. Unfortunately, he was unlucky. Shortly after he became famous, there were rumors that he was involved in prostitution. Later, he was isolated by good people in Hollywood, so he could only make funny films such as "The Condor Heroes" and "Invincible Boba". Although it sells well, it is limited to the comedy route. Only in recent years did he gain mainstream recognition again with the TV series "Little People in Politics".

Willem dafoe, another star of the film, has hardly been a first-class star, but he is called "Thousand Faces". His films include Born on the 4th of July, The Last Temptation of Christ, Night of the Ghosts, Wild My Heart, Physical Proof, The English Patient, Speed 2 and so on. He is called "an actor who played the most unexpected role in anticipation". Perhaps it is because he has been wandering between the mainstream and the edge that he has played so many roles with different personalities.

"Vietnam War Trilogy"

Pai is the first and most successful of oliver stone's Vietnam War trilogy. The other two were born on July 4th and Tiandi. 1989 Si Tong won the best director Oscar for the second time for Born on July 4th, and was nominated for best actor for starring Tom Cruise. Although he lost to Daniel Day Lewis in the end, Cruise succeeded in getting rid of the vase status of Butter Boy. Heaven and Earth (1992) was composed by Kitaro, and the music in the film was excellent.

In order to truly reproduce the scene of the Vietnam War, oliver stone's requirements for actors can be said to be harsh. They lived in a strict military camp in the Philippine jungle for two weeks. A veteran led them to dig trenches, climb a cliff with ropes, sleep in a bunker that can only accommodate two people, and change their posts for two hours at night ... After personal experience, the actors' performances were very vivid and the audience felt immersive. They can almost feel the unbearable heat, mud, mosquitoes, rats and poisonous snakes in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and experience the fear of soldiers and the hysteria of war.

[Edit this paragraph] Highlights

Gino Reeves refused to play private chris taylor.

Director's Guest: An officer in the bunker (oliver stone) was killed by a desperate guy.

The film unfolds through Charlie Sheen's narration, as if echoing the narration of his father Martin Shawn in another Vietnam War movie, Apocalypse Now (1979).

Before shooting, all the actors had to endure 14 days of hard military camping training in the Philippines. Actors cut their hair into military hairstyles, lived in tents like the characters in the characters, ate only food rationed by the army, could not take a bath, slept in the jungle, and were even asked to stand guard in shifts at night.

At the request of oliver stone, some special Marlboro cigarettes-cherry red packaging were specially made for the film. This is to be closer to the background of the late 1960s.

Half the soldiers in elias platoon are taking narcotic drugs. In this scene, the actor really smokes marijuana. It's a pity that they started filming after the scene was finished, and everyone felt dizzy and terrible.

In many courses of American military leaders, the role of Captain Wolff is taken as an example to show that being a junior officer is so timid.

Johnny Depp said that he was 22 years old when he went to the Philippines to shoot this film, which was the first time he left the United States in his life.

At the beginning of the film, Bigger Harold fell and rolled down the mountain when the subtitles were shown. Forest whitaker said it was true, not intentional wrestling.

The budget cost of the film is only $6 million, which is only a small part of most of oliver stone's film investment later.

Movies are almost always shot in sequence. So once the characters in the film are killed, the actors go home immediately. At the end of the film, Sean's sadness in the helicopter scene is entirely his true expression, because he will be the last poor man to go home.

The actors were warned not to drink the water in the river for fear of catching malaria. During the filming, Charlie Davies felt thirsty, so he drank the river. Later, he found the body of a dead pig floating upstream. He was ill for 24 hours, but fortunately he was not infected with malaria.

Elias's hands are held high in the air in the movie poster, which is an imitation of a photo of Art Grispin in 1968.