Platoon & FMJ: A Vietnam War Visual

I hadn't seen any movies about the Vietnam War yet and to be honest I was really excited to see the visuals of all that we've been studying about. I guess it never occurred to me how much of those visuals consisted of bloodshed, violence, and fear. I was a fan of both though, in their own way, they conveyed the war in the terms of which I thought about it, sad for both sides.

I watched FMJ first and it was a weird 30 minutes in. I didn't know how long they were going to stay in that military base, and I felt as if though I was waiting for them to get into Vietnam the whole time they were there. The humor was funny at times and I think that was the only thing that kept me intrigued with the movie. One character I was surprised they focused on so much was Gopher Pile. I didn't understand why they put so much focus on him, but in the bathroom scene when he broke down and killed himself, it was kind of a sad reminder of the brutal reality that the marines face, and some just can't handle it. I think my favorite scene, or the one that had the most impact on me was when they revealed the sniper to be a woman, a young girl of all things. When you think of this person shooting at their friends, one by one, you think of an evil NVA soldier who is gritty and disgusting, but its not; it was just a girl, in peasant clothing, fighting for what she thought was for her country's freedom.

Platoon, I felt was a much more in depth and really complex story. While FMJ really focused on the war and its terror, Platoon had complex characters that had complex stories. With Chris, who was a college kid and had no reason to go to Vietnam, he hadn't known of the horrors of Vietnam and when he was pushed into that world, he still held onto logic which the others seemed to lack. I think once again one of the most powerful scenes in the movie for me, was when Barnes shot that little girl's Ba Ngoai. I think her call for Ba Ngoai over and over was such an emotional scene because that's what I call my grandma. It was just a really sad reality to be faced with.

Overall, I think I liked Platoon a little more than FMJ because it had more depth and I really liked the character development of Taylor. I was never really a fan of war movies because I was just indifferent to them, but I think this has really opened my eyes, because they're not just about killing, they actually have a story to tell and a lesson to be learned.