Betrayal!

The scene I chose is from the movie ‘Platoon’, when Sergeant Barnes purposely killed Sergeant Elias and when Sergeant Elias was still alive and running away from the shooting Vietnamese. This scene had a big emotional and ethical impact towards me as a part of the audience. This scene came about through the progression of the two sergeants having conflicting views about situations. Sergeant Barnes had the mind of a ruthless and aggressive killer while Sergeant Elias had the mindset of a soldier who still had morality in him up until his death.
During the moment when the two sergeants met on opposite ends, Sergeant Elias was smiling because he believed that he had successfully mapped out the Vietnamese oppositions plans and defeated them because Sergeant Barnes came the opposite way. Then there was that moment of suspense, Sergeant Elias smiling because he had a moment of relief, up until Sergeant Barnes slowly pointed his rifle at him. After the wrongful killing by Sergeant Barnes, the realization of immorality of the American sergeant came across to me. It’s true that being in a war for a long period of time can get a person to become mentally ill, but for a soldier to kill a fellow soldier is immoral to the fullest extent. Sergeant Barnes ran into Chris Taylor and told him that Elias was dead when he really wasn’t. Taylor believed Barnes because Barnes was of higher rank and was a leader of a platoon. In Chris’s mind he probably believed him because of that. As for myself, I believed it because I witnessed the shooting while watching that scene. A big ruthless man like Barnes had to for sure murder Elias when he shot him. There was no way Elias was going to survive because Barnes looked stronger than Elias. The director made it seem that way so for a brief moment, I thought Elias was killed. So both Chris and I believed (in different perspectives) that Elias was dead.
When Sergeant Elias reappeared not long after, showing that he was still alive but rapidly in the process of dying because of the shooting from the Vietnamese, I became emotionally wrapped into the scene and speechless. I’m thinking this is what the author/director wanted the audience to feel, a sense of speechlessness and awe. I felt Sergeant Elias’s desperate cry for help and wanted to help him and so did Chris. I felt the pain because I saw the amount of pain Elias was in while he was desperately running away from the Vietnamese. I believe the author/director did a very good job in trying to portray this dramatic event.