Platoon and Full Metal Jacket

Two different, yet similar approaches are used in these two movies. While Platoon has a more serious tone, with the main character reading a letter to his grandmother throughout the movie, Full Metal Jacket offers a bit of comic relief. Watching Platoon, the realities of the Vietnam War and what it did to the American soldiers really sets-in. In Platoon the contrast between the “veteran” American soldiers who had absolutely no sympathy for the enemy, even the innocent, and the “fresh” American soldiers who were afraid to even kill the enemy soldier, demonstrates how war transforms and hardens a person. Jacket shows less of the actual war, and more of the training and relationships between soldiers, giving a slightly lighter feel to the movie than Platoon. But even in Jacket, the incident of the soldier who begins as the “screw-up” but ends up obsessed with becoming the perfect soldier and he drives himself to suicide, shows just what soldiers have to go through even from the beginning with training. Also in Jacket, towards the end of the movie, the soldiers end up shooting a woman with a sniper. Though she was shooting at them, she appears innocent, but that no longer prevents the soldiers from sparing her, when it might have in the beginning of the movie. In Platoon a line that really struck me was when it talked about how the soldiers fighting in the war were the “unwanted” ones back home, yet they are the ones fighting for their country. I have read plenty of articles and textbooks talking about war, but watching these two movies honestly gave me a whole new respect for the people that fight for our country.