Episode 72 - Platoon (It's like Helms Deep) - Middle Age Movie Reviews Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Electronic Media Collective podcast Network. Yeah,
it's a mouthful. For more great shows like the one
you're about to enjoy, visit Electronicmedia Collective dot com. And
now our feature presentation.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hello, welcome to the Middle Aged Movies Podcast. Three guys
saying let's go for it. Let's do the whole freaking podcast.
My name is Tim, and my podcasting partners are middle
Age Matt.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
And Dungeon Master Rick.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
All Right, Rick, tell us what we picked up from
the PX to watch this evening.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
All right, you guys.

Speaker 4 (00:39):
Tonight we're watching the nineteen eighty six movie Platoon, number
seven hundred and forty nine from the book of one
thousand and one Movies you Should Watch Before You Die,
written by Oliver Stone, directed by Oliver Stone, starring Charlie Sheen,
Tom Bringer and the great William Dafoe.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
Thanks, Rick, Here we are back again in the trenches
of another war film. So this time, Rick, when was
the first time you saw Platoon?

Speaker 4 (01:08):
I don't even know, honestly, and I didn't even think
about it til you just asked. Which We've been doing
this for a year over a year now. Honestly, don't
know when I watched this the first time. I have
seen it countless times. I have a small collection of movies,
most of the greats and stuff, and not too long ago.

(01:30):
My wife think it was like a maybe six months
back or eight months back or something like that. My
wife actually picked this one up because she knows that
I really like this one. I've seen it in a
number of times, but I couldn't say exactly when. I
know it wasn't in a movie theater or anything like that.
It's I probably first caught it on. Like many of

(01:51):
the movies that I've seen in the past, is I
probably first caught it on something like broadcast television like
USA or right or you know, TNT or Up All
Night or whatever.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
You know.

Speaker 5 (02:03):
Okay, how about you, Tim, when was the first time
you saw a platoon?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
This definitely had to fall under either a Blockbuster Night
or HBO. And I almost want to say HBO because
that's where I got to see a lot of the
mid to late eighties movies. Because Blockbuster. I don't think
Blockbuster movie rentals really just coming into its own I
think around that time, so selections weren't always that great,

(02:26):
and I wasn't mobile yet. I had no vehicles, so
I was not always able to get to a video
store unless my parents took me there. And I'm not yeah,
maybe they would have might have. They might have let
me rent this at that time. I'm not sure, but yeah,
I would say either way, I either watched it my
I'm guessing my father either rented it and I watched
it with him, or I probably was over at one

(02:49):
of my buddy's houses spending the night and we watched
it on HBO during a Friday or Saturday night.

Speaker 6 (02:55):
Gotcha. Well, I'm going to be the outlier here and
it's gonna surprise you guys. And I probably got to
get emails from some of our listeners. But I have
never seen this movie.

Speaker 5 (03:05):
I thought I had, but when I went to watch them, like, no,
I have memories of all the other war films, you know,
like Apocalypse Now and The Shine're Not Shiny.

Speaker 7 (03:15):
Shining.

Speaker 6 (03:17):
Metal Jacket. Yeah, but I could not remember watching this movie.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
This one's so good, man, I can't believe you missed this.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
It's a mind blower. Man, that's a mind blower.

Speaker 6 (03:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:26):
It's like, well, yeah, I've I've never seen this movie before,
so it's fresh eyes it's a fresh take on this
film for me, And I.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Think what was it Hamburger Hill. About the same time
this came out, there was like three major Vietnam movies
that came out during this time. I think it was
like Hamburger Hill, this one, and I can't remember what
the other one was.

Speaker 5 (03:43):
A year A year later, Full Metal Jacket comes out.
So full Metal Jacket was eighty seven, this was eighty six. Yeah,
so full Metal I think I think Hamburger.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
Hill was was eighty eighty six as well.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Okay, yeah, so I've never seen Hamburger Hill. Was that
one pretty good?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
It's it's decent. Yeah, it's it's not bad. It's Clint
Eastwood one. Okay, So I would recommend going to watch it.
And this one's actually kind of interesting because if you
watch this one first, where this one ends is kind
of where Full Metal Jacket picks up.

Speaker 5 (04:13):
Yeah, Hamburger Hill was nineteen eighty seven, so you're right
right in that era.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh look at that. The gray matter did not let
me down tonight. Now did you see the other two
but not this one?

Speaker 5 (04:26):
Uh well, obviously I've seen Full Metal Jack several times,
but Hamburger Hill, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (04:32):
I think that might be another one that I haven't seen.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh man, everybody's coming to my house. We're gonna watch
Hamburger Hill.

Speaker 5 (04:39):
Well, Tim, now that we've kind of gone over some
of the Vietnam war movies that we've seen and haven't seen,
what do you have for us tonight? As our resident
drill sergeant? What are you commanding for this synopsis?

Speaker 2 (04:51):
All right, Matthew tonight, I would like you to read
the synopsis as one of the letters that Charlie Sheen's
character Chris Taylor writes his grand.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
All right, let's see what I can do for you, grandma.
Somebody once wrote hell is the impossibility of reason. That's
what this place feels like.

Speaker 6 (05:11):
Hell. I hate it.

Speaker 5 (05:12):
Since I dropped out of college to join the army
and fight in Vietnam, I struggled to maintain not only
my strength but my sanity. When I first got here,
nobody even cared about me. They didn't even want to
know my name. I had to get shot before they
would even acknowledge me as a member of the platoon.
The worst part is I'm caught between two leaders. The
battle hardened staff Sergeant Robert Barnes and the easygoing sergeant

(05:36):
Elias Groden. You see, Grandma, we have been seeing a
lot of action and the stress of constant combat and
death is taking its toll on the men. There was
an altercation during the interrogation of an NBA village, and
in the heat of.

Speaker 6 (05:50):
The moment, Barnes killed an unarmed villager. It's getting harder
to know what's right and what's wrong anymore. The morale
of the men is low.

Speaker 5 (05:58):
Now there's a civil war in the plains. Half the
men with Elias, half with Barnes. There's a lot of
suspicion and hate. I can't believe we're fighting each other
when we should be fighting VC.

Speaker 6 (06:09):
I have to go now, Grandma. They're sending us out
on another patrol.

Speaker 5 (06:13):
Only this time I fear I'll be fighting two battles,
one with the enemy and one with the men in
my own platoon.

Speaker 7 (06:19):
Chris, it is.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Nicely done, Matthew, nicely done. And I heard you huff.
You couldn't huff that bad about this one. I mean,
come on, it's very nice and short. As you request
that I made you a nice, easy one this time.

Speaker 5 (06:43):
Yes, thank you, and you know it definitely Keys towards
someone's morality and the emotion of a rate writing their
tim thank you, so.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
You know, And I know I'd even go further and
say that there's a third battle, the battle within his
own self, you know, yes, to make those moral choices.

Speaker 5 (07:03):
Yes, And you see it, You see that he's he
is worrying with, you know, his good side and his
bad side, the angel on one shoulder and the devil
on the other.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I think it's more of a battle just keeping insanity,
if I was going to make a call more than
a Moraley thing.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, he just keeps.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Descending into madness, and it's harder and harder to try
not to be pulled into all the chaos that's going
on around him.

Speaker 7 (07:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah, Yeah, that's what you get from good writing. I got, man,
old man, do not skip forward. But at the very end,
I like to be able to have a little soap
box about all this good writing compared to what we
got going on nowadays.

Speaker 6 (07:46):
Yeah, and you.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
Know, let's let's let's talk a little bit about Oliver Stone.
I mean, this movie is loosely based on his on
his experiences, and I think that it's it's phenomenal that
he's able to tap into what he experienced put it
on film just to kind of maybe help exercise some
of the demons in his own soul from being over
there in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, it isn't loosely based. It's heavily based on his
experience at Vietnam. I mean, because Albert Stone grew up
just like the main character does. He comes from a
pretty affluent family. He went to Yale, drops out, floats
around doing some other jobs, goes back drops out, goes
in the military, becomes highly decorated. He actually he's there

(08:27):
for I think, I want to say, fourteen months, and
I think he gets at least one Purple Heart, several
I think a Bronze Star good Conduct Metal, amongst others.
And then when he came back, a lot of these
are the whores that he witnessed why he was there.
In fact, the US Army wouldn't even support this, Like
all the vehicles that you see and things like that

(08:48):
were actually given to this production by the Armed Forces
of the Philippines because the US Department of Defense would
not lend them anything or support the film because they
thought he would over the critical of the Vietnam War,
even though he argued out, I'm not making this stuff up.
This these are things that I actually witnessed, and they're like,

(09:08):
no when I have it right.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
Yeah, And did you guys happen to check the or
see the the cameo.

Speaker 6 (09:15):
Of Oliver Stone in the film?

Speaker 3 (09:16):
I did not. I did not. Where was it?

Speaker 5 (09:19):
So in the final sequence the battle of the NBA
coming in and attacking all the guys and the bunkers
and stuff, there's two guys on the radio and the
the suicide bomber that runs into the place and blows
it up. The guy talking on the radio was Oliver.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Stone, Oh man, okay, all right.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah. The other one is as Dale die. He was
He was basically there as a consultant, although which is
kind of weird because Aliver Stone really didn't need a
consultant because he also was a Vietnam But Dale dies
Captain Harris, so he's he's the Vietnam consultant. Plus he
plays the captain and he's the door gunner, so if
you look at the door gunner down, that's that's him

(09:58):
as well.

Speaker 6 (09:59):
Yeah, and of course Dale dies.

Speaker 5 (10:00):
The one of the few decorated officers that survives the
big fight at the end. Yeah, let's now that we've
talked a little about Oliver Stone, let's talk about our
art titular character played by Charlie Sheen. So what do
you guys think of Charlie Sheen as a central character
considering that, you know, just seven years prior, his dad
was a central character and Apocalypse Now, you know, here

(10:21):
we are, we're in the same war, but yet we
have two well one was a captain, one was he's
just a private Yeah, just a grunt if you will. Yeah, yeah,
So I just thought it was funny that here's two
guys that are, you know, father and son playing in
similar movies.

Speaker 6 (10:36):
What'd you think of that?

Speaker 2 (10:37):
I mean, I thought it was really interesting. I mean
it it's almost scary in the way that it echoes
basically with Martin Sheen did an Apocalypse Now the narration
is kind of the same. I almost feel like it
was like Charlie had to get you know, uh, he
had to kind of copy his dad's footsteps as far
as this went a little bit, you know. Uh. But

(10:58):
the thing I find even more interesting than that, though,
it's Charlie wasn't the first one pick for this. It
was actually Emilio that was supposed to star in this film,
and so he was signed on and they were ready
to do it, but it kept getting put off and
kept getting put off. Finally Emelio had to basically bow
out of it. By time it, you know, was greenlit
to be produced, and Charlie, who had wanted to do

(11:20):
it originally they thought, was too young. He re auditioned
for it and he got the part. So no matter what,
it seemed like a Sheen was gonna play this character.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
Let me guess Emelia was too hyped up to play
in the role. For Men at Work, I love that movie.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, yeah, I love that movie.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Man as a fantastic show, And we got one other
We have one other actor in here that's on that
show too. Do you you know who it is?

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah? The what's his name? Is the African American guy? Yeah,
David Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah King.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
But that Somebody's thrown away a perfectly good white boy.
Yeah yeah. It's one of my favorite Charlie Sheen movies.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
No, I.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
Haven't seen a whole lot of of Charlie and Emilio's
dad and movies. I think he was in Spartacus though, right,
was that or was I'm I thinking of someone.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
I'm thinking of Douglas. I'm thinking of Douglas Douglas. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
No, I've seen him a number of times and maybe
some war movies and stuff, but nothing that nothing I
can really be like, Oh, yeah, he was really good
in this.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
I don't know, maybe a.

Speaker 4 (12:33):
Little bit, a little bit before I really started getting
the movies and stuff like that. You know, Charlie under
her hand in this. I mean, you take a look
at where he's gone from here. He doesn't really take
a whole lot of serious roles like this is serious,
you know what I'm saying. Most of the roles that
I see him in nowadays and pretty much ever since
this has been like spoofs and parodies and comedies and

(12:56):
roles that don't really take you know, that the movie
doesn't take the characters all too serious. You know.

Speaker 5 (13:03):
Yeah, it seems like after I would say, Ferris Bueller's
Day Off, it leans more towards the comedic roles, unless
you count Young Guns.

Speaker 6 (13:10):
Young Guns is a little more serious.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, well, was Charlie in that? I remember I thought
Amelia was in that, wasn't it. They both were Okay,
all right.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, I think Young Guns actually focuses more on Emelia
than it does Charlie. He's got a lesser role. But
you also have to remember that before this, Charlie was
in Red Dawn, so you know that was that was
a classic, you know, I mean, I know it's not
like a full on war film, yeah, but it's still
it's futuristic, potential Cold war war film, you know. And

(13:42):
he was good in that. And then we're gonna see
him and then we're gonna see the ever classic The
Raith after this, you know, Charlie's horror film, so you know,
I love that as well. He does Wall Street with
his father. If you've never seen the hot Shots, they're
both in pt boats and they're coming down the river
and going opposite ways, and they're kind of narrating in
their heads if you're kind of replaying the whole Pockets,

(14:04):
you know, apocalyps now seen, and then they kind of
see the boat and they kind of both stand up
and they look at each other and they point and
they go, loved you and Wall Street and it just
passed and they keep going. One of my favorite moments
in cinema.

Speaker 6 (14:16):
Well, there's there's one other.

Speaker 5 (14:17):
There's one other actor I wanted, I want to mention
before we dive into the story, and of course that's
that's Willem Dafoe. And you know, he plays our kind
of more heroic, morally sound sergeant, a Sergeant Elias. And
I thought there was a funny comment in there where
one of the one of the guys says says to

(14:37):
the other sergeant, he says, you know, that's sergeant Elias.
You know, it seems like he's he's like, he's like Jesus.
And I couldn't help but laugh because literally after he's
done shooting this, he goes off to make another movie
playing Jesus in.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
The Last Christ. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
Yeah, So I just thought, well, is this like a
wink and a nod, you know, a little elbow shoulder
elbow to to the to the audience.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Well, you know. It was also interesting is that Aliver
Stone actually cast them counter to their normal type cast.
So if you think about it, Barringer mostly plays good guys.
Will the Foe had primarily played you villains up to
this point, and he you know, switched them out. It's
a great effect.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
I think they both got Oscar nominations, so it worked
out really well.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, Yeah, they did real good.

Speaker 5 (15:24):
Yeah. And you know, you bring up Barringer, and I
gotta say he he he steals the show as the bad.

Speaker 6 (15:30):
Guy in this movie.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, he's hardcore.

Speaker 5 (15:33):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, man, he's definitely channeling like I
would say, he's almost channeling like an evil Rambo or
even just an evil John Wayne. You know, he's he's
got the scars on his face and he just he
just looks menacing on top of that, you know, you
could see that he his soul has just become blackened.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
By the by the war.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah. And there are times when you see him contemplate
the city situation, and I think that kind of leads
Creed it to what you just said, because he doesn't.
I think he's passed the point where he reflects on
it and is thinking of the humanity. I think he's
just past that point where when he's reflecting on the
things that happened, like that one scene inside that bunker

(16:18):
that blows up afterwards, he's contemplating and Chris Charlie Sheen's
character kind of gives him a kind of like a
look like you know, what, what.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Is he considering?

Speaker 4 (16:28):
And and you might think earst that he's considering.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
Like you know, why and how and all this stuff.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
But I think he's just at that point, at least
at this point in his tenure in Nam, he's just like,
you know, in that calm before the storm type of rage.
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Well, Charlie Sheen was actually on a podcast and he
attributed the intensity of Behringer's role as Barnes was the
direct result of a really bitter divorce that he had
gone through just prior to filming this film. So he
just channel all the anger from that into this area.
Ah yeah, Yeah, he came from a dark place and

(17:05):
he put it good.

Speaker 5 (17:06):
Use talk about uh, shoot, just slipped out of my
head a senior moment.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Talk about a senior moment. Method acting, method.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
Acting, math acting, method acting, very not acting.

Speaker 6 (17:24):
Yes we're not we're not in the middle of Florida.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
And then and you know what, they did a real
good job in uh kind of showcasing the conflict that
they had with nature. I mean, it wasn't the star
of the show or anything like that, but early on
and it's like, no, it's it's this is not just
some regular place that they're having these battles. This is
a fucking jungle, and it's got things that will kill

(17:49):
you and keep you up at night, you know.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
What I mean.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
There's snakes everywhere, There's ants that seem like they're gonna
crawl into your skull and you know, eat.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Your brain out.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
There's all manner of malaria and diseases and stuff like that.
So we're ten to twenty minutes ago we had mentioned
that there's you know, conflict between you know, man versus
man within the platoon, within the two different armies. I'm sorry, yeah,
and then man versus himself within many of the characters,
there's also man versus nature. And you don't see it tons,

(18:23):
but you do see it. Yeah, And that definitely I
think is important to note that, Like when they're not
engaged in battle with the enemy, whoever that may be,
they're always being engaged with that nature.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Well, and the weather too. I mean those four baskets
over there, yeah, couldn't stay dry. I mean they're in
a jungle and it just it rings a lot over there,
and especially when you get into monsoon season, those guys
are just wet all the time. So now you're adding
in being in human conditions. And then as you said,
like the bugs and the snakes, and so dude, oh
what a miserable.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
You never get a reprieve.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah. Yeah, and they're always if you watch, these as
are constantly going out and patrol. They're there. Most time,
they're sleeping on the ground. They're not going back to
a nice forward operating base or something like that. I mean,
there's just.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
As they call it, a white bed, a bed with
white sheets.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah. I mean they got a little bit of that.
I mean eveyer On's while they're going back to kind
of a home base. But most of the time they're
out humping through the jungle, you know, doing ambushes and
everything else. So I just these these four bastards that
fought that war. It just what a miserable, miserable existence
that had to be. And you know, three hundred and
sixty five days of it, a whole year they had
to endure that. Yeah, and that's not including getting shot at,

(19:32):
having things blow up and booby traps and all that
other stuff too.

Speaker 5 (19:36):
Well, let's let's dive in then into the story since
we've kind of we've kind of hit some key points,
but let's go ahead and take a look at the
story itself. So Platoon follows the emotional and physical journey
of a young, idealistic American soldier in Vietnam who becomes
caught in the battle between his soul between two vastly
different sergeants. The film's three act structure follows Chris Taylor's
descent into moral ambiguity of combat and is brutal away

(20:00):
to the true nature of war.

Speaker 6 (20:01):
Though the new recruit.

Speaker 5 (20:02):
Chris Taylor shows up and he actually volunteers for combat
in Vietnam in nineteen sixty seven, abandoning a privileged life
to prove himself, the idealistic recruit quickly finds that his
naivety shattered upon arrival, facing the exhausting conditions of jungle
warfare and the terrifying immediate threat of death. Rick, you
mentioned the battle with nature, and I just think that

(20:26):
you see that point blank. When they first start marching
through the jungle, Chris has got his full pack on.
He's you know, he's walking through all this. He's he
doesn't have the experience of dealing with the jungle. And
the first thing you see is he gets stricken by
what first I thought would have been like malaria from
like mosquitoes, but it looks like red ants, like crawling
on them, and just this the sure heat of it all.

(20:48):
And I mean that just it gave me chipps, I
mean freaks me out a little bit.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Got the crawlers, did you? Yes?

Speaker 4 (20:56):
But even the heat, I mean I think the madic
gives him a little bit of water and it's like
Charlie Sheen is like trying to take down that canteen
and the medic is like, nah, bro, you can't be
drinking that kind of much.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Water, even though you really really want to.

Speaker 4 (21:13):
Is gonna you know, probably cramping and other things that
are gonna cause problems down the road. You cannot do that.
Your body may need, yeah, but you can't do.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
That right now.

Speaker 5 (21:22):
Oh yeah, Yeah, especially if if you're sweating that much
and you're trying to replace that water, it's it's gonna
hurt you a lot.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Well, being a green recruit. The reason that he's so miserable.
If you look around at all the rest of the
platoon or I guess the squad that he's with, you know,
these guys, some of them are not even wearing helmets.
Their sleeves are rolled up there. You know, they're just
walking around like they're almost walking through a town, you know,
things like that. He's still in that boot camp mindset
where he's got on his full uniform. He's got all

(21:52):
his provisions, everything that they told him he needed to have.
I mean when you see him pulling things when he
find collapses and they kind of look at that backpack.
Oh man, you you don't need to bring all this
pulling books out of there and all that kind of joke.
Because these guys are seasoned. They know exactly what you
need and what you don't need. You need water, you
need some food, You probably need a towel, rain poncho.
You need your ammo and your gun, you know, and

(22:13):
and that's it, Like you want to you want to
move light. And he's so overburdened and so overdressed for
the you know where he's at. That just takes a
toll on him overall until he learns like the rest
of them later on, as you see, as it progresses,
he begins to look more like the rest of the guys.
Where you know, the discipline of the uniformity of these
of how the soldiers should look goes out the window.

Speaker 6 (22:36):
You mean, a.

Speaker 4 (22:36):
Uniform, well you know what they'll I get what you're saying, Tim,
And I would even go a step further and say
that he almost tries to emulate how Sergeant Elias kind
of rolls, you know, like in in all ways, not
just in his dress, but in his method of attack. Yeah,
you know, and you get to see that at the
very end. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a clear

(22:58):
development of care here, which is something that is probably
one of the major points to mention that's really good
about this movie is that character development, especially in our protagonists.

Speaker 5 (23:10):
Yeah, you definitely get the Joseph Campbell heroes journey with Chris,
but it's not really structured like a typical three act story,
so it takes some scenes and everything to kind of
develop this this character piece. So yeah, good point there, Rick.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
You are right.

Speaker 5 (23:29):
He does take up a lot of Elias's look, and
I thought it was kind of neat that. You know,
Elias is the only guy that actually comes forward and says, hey, look,
you don't need to carry all this I'll carry half
this stuff.

Speaker 6 (23:38):
You should check with me first. You know, he actually
is a bit of a friend.

Speaker 5 (23:41):
He knows that, you know, at some point, you know,
whoever he's with, they're gonna have to look out.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
For his back like he's gonna look out for theirs.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
I just thought it was very higher moral value to
Stargeant Elias versus the rest of the squad.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
Something that Elias says is that I think he was
talking to the medic or maybe he was talking to
Tom Behringers, was it Sergeant Barnes, And he meant he
says something along the lines of the new recruits, if
the new recruits live long enough to learn something like
because nobody teaches them shit, nobody, you know, like you

(24:16):
said in the synopsis, nobody even cares to learn their name.
And it's really a death sense that sentence that first
week or two that they're in nom because they don't
know what the hell's going on, and no one's willing
to teach him, not just not just our protagonist, but
any of the new recruits. Yeah, and they just don't

(24:37):
live long enough to learn how to actually survive and
to contribute.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (24:42):
And of course you know we see that in the
in the following scenes with with like the first casualties
on the field, and that's Chris is assigned as a
lookout for that one night and after he's you know,
spent his time. He passes off his gun over to
a junior, and then junior is supposed to be taking

(25:03):
watch and Junior falls right back asleep. Bro, Yeah, yeah,
And I'm like, well wait a minute, hold on, now,
you're you're you're passing off to junior, who I believe
was a more experienced soldier. You think that, you know,
he'd be like, Okay, we're in the thick of it.
I should be awake and ready to go, and he's not.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
But I mean, I imagine exhaustion plays a big part of that. Again,
these guys are humping through the jungle all day. He
even kind of describes that. He says, we get up
at five am. We humped through the jungle all day long.
We finally stop, we eat, and we got to dig
a foxhole, and then we drop get a couple hours
of sleep, and then we're out to do ambush. So
these guys are not sleeping me. I can't. We've we've

(25:44):
all done a hard day's labor, Kenny, you know, working
around the house, digging ditches, whatever it is that we
you know, need to do. I can't imagine doing all that,
getting done, eating dinner, getting like three hours sleep and
then be out trying to stay awake all night. And
I mean, you would think that the fear of running
into the enemy would keep you awake, but eventually even

(26:06):
that is going to numb itself because you're always in
a perpetual state of fear, and you just you're just
gonna let your guard down, either through sheer exhaustion or
through the repetitiveness of the action, and it just finally
kind of dulls itself and the survival instinct kind of
goes away a little bit. I guess I don't know

(26:28):
how to describe it, but you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
Yeah, And I think this was one of the moments
right before this scene they talked about like yo, man,
we were just on ambush or something like that, and
so yeah, I mean, I'm sure Junior was back to
back to back to back, like, you know, weeks on end,
doing the same old shit, you know. So yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree with that.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Tim.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
I'd be terrified that the guy next to me is
gonna start snoring, because I think one of them in
that jungle was snoring. Talk about giving yourself away, right,
that would be one of my greatest fears. Just like, dude,
you gotta stop sleep and you were snoring. You just
need to stop. And I know people tend to snore
more when they're exhausted.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
Yea.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
And how about that scene with Chris when he's just
sitting there just petrified when the the VC creep up
to their uh, their watch line or ambush line or whatever.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
He just he just can't for the light.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
He sees where the what's it called the trigger is
that he's got to hit. Yeah, he sees where the hammer.
I think it's a hammer they call it or a
rock or so, I don't know what they call. He
sees where that is, he sees where the other thing is,
and he's like, man, I could you could you could
feel it that he he knows he can make this happen,

(27:46):
but he just can't, for the life of him, actually
move to action.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Was it that so much as I think, you know,
he woke up, he realizes that Junior's asleep, and then
he kind of looks around and he thinks he sees something.
He kind of awfu lily, he's trying to get the
bugs off of him, and he looks again. He's a
little spooked, and then he finally sees them start to move,
and I think it was more. I think it was
less of him being petrified and he's just looking around

(28:11):
and goes, Okay, the trigger for the clay wars is
over here, out of reach, and my gun is over
there out of reach. And if I go for either
one of these, I'm going to make noise because I'm
in a raincoat, because you know, raincoats are like you know,
anytime you're wearing what Yeah, and they're gonna see that action?
Am I gonna? You know? Now I have to remember
that I have to pull the pin on the clay

(28:31):
war and then squeeze it three times real fast, go off.
Can I get that done before these guys raise there
gunna shoot me? Or do I reach for my gun
and can I get it? And then, you know, I'm
assuming he probably has one chamber, but get it, draw it,
drop the safety off, and start shooting before again, these
guys that are walking straight towards him see him.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
I probably I don't know if he was thinking about
the safety because what he does do it He didn't
take the safety eye, right, do you remember that?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (28:58):
Yeah, so's There's a lot of things going on though, I.

Speaker 5 (29:03):
Think he's coming from a point of not necessarily fear,
but the fact that he doesn't want to get shot,
and he's he's like, they're gonna see me any second,
and if I move, they're gonna see me, because that's
when that's when they obscrewed. Yeah, when they start moving,
that's when the viewer of the film sees them. And
you don't see that that helmet until after it starts
to move, and it's like, okay, so yeah, you definitely

(29:25):
you can't see anything in the jungle well.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
And you can't call out to your buddies because that'll
give you away. And they're not close enough to where
you can kick or hit one of them. So I
almost think I would have sat there too, because there
is a chance, I mean, ano they're kind of walking
your way, they may turn, or they may not see
you at all, because it depends with the moonlight. You're
in the jungle. Even with moonlight, they're usually pretty dense,
so there's a good chance maybe they won't see you,

(29:48):
even if they get right up on top of you.
But again, not only is it you know, his life
that's at stake, but if they see him, they're just
gonna start shooting all over the place, and a lot
of guys are gonna, you know, take it too. So yeah,
it it's really a danned if you do danned if
you don't scenario, and I don't. I don't know if
there was a right or wrong move at that point.

Speaker 6 (30:07):
Yeah, part of.

Speaker 5 (30:08):
The thing might might might have helped him at the
time too, if he had a towel over his face,
so that was kind of helped preventing the moonlight from
catching his eyes or his teeth or something like that.
So I just thought that, Okay, yeah, I can understand
not moving because you don't want to get your attention
drawn to you. He does manage to get off some
rounds and you don't do the claymore. And we see
the firefight erupt and Taylor takes one to the to

(30:30):
the neck area and he's down, and he of course
gets blamed for for all the casualties that occur, when
really it was Junior's fault because Junior was supposed to
be awake.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Yeah, I don't think what Junior said really convinced and
either of the two sergeants.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
I think the sergeant's.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Pretty well new even though when Barnes was you know,
lecturing or disciplining or whatever you want to call it.
He kind of put his his uh more of his
attention towards Chris. You could tell that he was like, yeah, Junior,
it was your fucking fault because at the end he's like, yeah, Junior,
you're carrying a gardener.

Speaker 6 (31:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
You don't know if you guys saw, but he fucking
stood up for some reason. There's a firefight. He just
like stood up. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's probably not
a good idea. Man.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Well, that was the other green guy. He didn't make
it the week for sure, the two weeks or whatever
it is. And then the other poor bastard one of
the guys, and I can't remember which one it was,
but he popped that phosphorusc anda. He went to throw
it and it went backwards and hit that other guy.
So that guy took that phosphorus hit. So he was
like friendly fire in that one does suck too. I
can't imagine getting hit and then things because they just

(31:39):
get in and there just burning and burning and burning.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
I remember seeing an episode of Mash where they were
trying to operate on somebody who had phosphorus burns, and
in order to cool him down, the like get them
in a tubble of water so that they could find
the phosphorus in his leg. Wow, man, I don't know
how true you know an episode of mash is compared
to real life?

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Hey, man, if it was on TV, I'm sure true.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
I think it was one of those if I remember
riding mass Not to say it again, I don't know
if it's true, but I think it had embedded itself
in and it gotten into the media part, and if
they exposed it to the air, it with like starting
up again or something. So yeah, that's why they did
what they did. Yeah, I don't know if that's true
or not. I guess i'd have to look into that,
but sure it sounds like good science.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
Yeah, Taylor's wounded, so he he gets shipped off to recover.
What was it that Forrest Whitaker said, white sheets in
three three weeks.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
Of three Yeah, three meals and three three squares a
day or three meals a day and white sheets.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
So but of course, you know, after Taylor recovers, you know,
he comes back to the to the unit. You know,
there's there's now like a new allegiance with him because
he's he's now been out there with them and he's
kind of seen as one of them. Now he starts
to spend time with Elias's group.

Speaker 6 (32:46):
You know, Elias is much like a lot of the.

Speaker 5 (32:49):
Guys that went over there to Vietnam at that time.
They were heavy in drug use just because of what
they experienced, what they went through. You know, he uses
drugs to escape the pressures of the war, and he
begins to see Elias as like a mentor while becoming
increasingly wary of barnes brutal methods. We eventually see those
brutal methods on our next deployment, in which Barnes and

(33:12):
Elias's riffed kind of explode and the two faction of
the platoon starts to grow when we see some atrocities.
But before we get to the atrocities, would you guys
think of heavy drug induced area of the camp and
some of the craziness that was going on there.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
I thought that this was a really important scene, like
there really wasn't any combat or anything that a little
bit of a reprieve to more heighten the action that
plays out in the next scene. But I think it's
more than that, because there's some powerful messages both as

(33:50):
a story as a whole, but also points to keep
in mind for the character development, especially with Chris, because
they were talking when they were on duty duty, they
were they were they were pulling out those drums a
shit literally and they were talking about like how long

(34:11):
you got or whatever, and Chris was like, because he'd
only been in there for a few weeks. I think
he said something like he needs to go for another
three hundred and twenty two days or something like that.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
And then they'd asked like, Okay, well why are you
even here?

Speaker 4 (34:25):
And he talks about how he was going to college
and he had I think he even mentioned he had
a decent line for something like that, and he decided
that he wanted to do something. He used the line
of something along the meaning.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
Of poor poor always have to fight?

Speaker 4 (34:40):
Why why is it the rich kids always are never
really going to be fighting the war? So he said that,
you know, he felt like it was his duty as
someone of the you know, upper class to actually represent
you know. Yeah, And I really do think that that
line was very specifically put in because if you really
take look throughout history, that is the case, it's not

(35:02):
just Vietnam, it's not you know, any war other it's
it's every single war that Unfortunately, the rich and powerful
are the ones who are getting nations into wars and
conflicts and stuff like that. And it's typically those who
have none, I either poor and working classes that are

(35:23):
the ones who are going to actually be in the
trenches to fight it. Well, the other thing too, is
they're talking they actually mentioned, uh, the conspiracy that there
was chemicals in the grass.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (35:36):
It was they showed the Elias group and then they
cut to the tent that had all that had Barnes's
crew were all drinking beers and stuff, and Junior and
I don't remember the character's name, the one.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Who was who would wear the helmet that had the
tail on the back.

Speaker 6 (35:55):
Dylan's character, Yeah, Kevin Dillon's character.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, that was no tail, sir, that was scalp.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Alrighty a scalp it was.

Speaker 4 (36:05):
But yeah, they were talking about the chemicals inside the grass,
and man was so much more.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
I actually recently was watching this documentary.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
About how the chemical companies like Monsanto and stuff had
for years been using Glyphis sake and or actually it
was a derivative. Glyphas is a derivative of this more
powerful chemical that was used on different type of grasses
and crops and stuff, and people who were using it

(36:38):
were just dying like left and right and getting like
all sorts of like cancer's tumors and stuff. And they
were given a contract actually deploy some of these agents
onto the jungle to kind of like remove the foliage
of the jungle to be able to for the war effort.
You know, the problem is that glyphisa is not something

(37:02):
you want, like as a human being. Pretty much any
organism that stuff will kill you. So that form of
life essay is well known now by the.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Name of Agent Orange.

Speaker 6 (37:14):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
Yeah, So even though in the movie they talked it
like it was some sort of conspiracy theory, that was
a conspiracy, it wasn't a theory.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
That shit was really happening.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
They were really putting chemicals in to the jungle. And
you know, I imagine you know, some of the drugs that
they were smoking the jungle from the jungle.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong on that, Rick, because I
actually knew a guy that was in Vietnam. He was
definitely thick into where they were spreading the agent orange
and it completely decimated his body. When I met him,
he was in a wheelchair at a veterans home. He
had no function over his body anymore. He said the
agent orange just completely wrecked him and he had couldn't walk,

(37:57):
he couldn't get out a chair on his own. He
could work his arms still a little bit, but he
said that Asian orange is completely screwed his entire body.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
You know, mon Santle still uses a that derivative of
agent Orange in the form of Life Essay. It's used
on crops like soybean, and nowadays we know it as
round up. Yeah, so be careful Americans out there, careful

(38:25):
what you eat.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
But it's funny, but it's not, man, it's for real.

Speaker 6 (38:31):
That's why our garden is all organic.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
There.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
You go find it interesting. You bring up the whole
drug thing too, because that was purposely put in there
by Oliverstone, and it basically to align with his personal
beliefs because he felt that people who smoke marijuana are
far less you know, I don't want to say harmful,
but they're less. They're they're far more stable than people

(38:55):
who drink alcohol on a regular basis, and you see
that because there's that divide. Basically, there's the group of stoners,
which is where Charlie Sheen kind of ends up his
character Chris, and then there is the bar inside, whether
the hard drinking card playing group of guys, the bar guys,
if you will, and those guys are all super aggressive, yeah,
you know, where the other guys are very laid back

(39:16):
and relaxed, far more chilled out. And he's he always
felt that way about it. That's what he's trying to
personally portray in this is his personal least on the
use of marijuana versus hard alcohol and probably more prescription
drugs probably later in life.

Speaker 6 (39:33):
So they were angry drunks versus you know, mellow hot stoners. Yeah,
but yeah, yeah, I can. I definitely get what you're
talking about him.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
It does make you think, you know, how much of
Oliver Stone is in the Chris character, and you see
a lot of it.

Speaker 6 (39:50):
Basically, they just should just they should just rename the
character Christian to Oliver.

Speaker 5 (39:56):
The two factions of the platoon, you know, they grow
into like a full fledged conflict after a major morality
issue occurs, and you know they're sense to check out
some bunkers and different areas that they understand the VC
has been occupying, and that's when they come across a bunker.
They send Elias down into the tunnels. This is a

(40:16):
great depiction of what tunnel warfare.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Was like in Vietnam.

Speaker 5 (40:20):
You know, you see Alias kind of go down into
this tunnel and he goes underneath.

Speaker 6 (40:24):
Like this this little like water area.

Speaker 5 (40:26):
But I know that there was like little death traps
in there and booby traps. But then Elias comes out
and he sees some of the VC, you know, he
takes them out. And then on the opposite of that,
when the guys above are going through the through the
bunkers and stuch, they come across a box with maps
in it, and the guys like careful to like move everything,

(40:46):
but he doesn't carefully move the box and then it
blows up and you see that very graphic scene of
of what happens afterwards, and I was like, man, that's
very shocking. It's very visceral that it definitely gives the
viewer some emotional feelings about what what happened in this
guerrilla warfare.

Speaker 6 (41:04):
What was your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Tim oh Man one oh one do not move things
around if you if you're fighting a war like in
Vietnam or even and the modern day ones in Iraq
and things like that, booby traps are everywhere. You just
don't go pick up random stuff. If it looks to
be too good to be true, it probably is. As
soon as I seen that box, my first thought was,

(41:28):
don't touch don't you just just don't, you know, don't
be touching, don't be messing with it. If you need
to know, get yourself a big stick, get behind something
and push that thing over. You know, just use some
common sense. You just you don't start picking up random things,
especially because they're coming through that camp and we're seeing
the hung clothes, there's still food cooking, the fires are
still you know, right burning all that kind of stuff.

(41:50):
So you know, they were literally just there. They knew
you were coming. They all evacuated, and the odds are
you're you're gonna find some booby traps, so you need
to be really careful.

Speaker 6 (42:02):
Yeah. They even mentioned, oh the teapot is still hot.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
So yeah, if you're coming into a scenario like that,
you should be super wary, super careful. And I agree
with you, that you know, when you know, willing to
foe goes down into the tunnels. That's something we'll probably
never get a lot of because I think it's just
so hard to shoot. But if you study that man
that's unnerved, that whole tunnel rat thing, because they they

(42:29):
had guys that that's what they did, and they usually
carry pistols, shotguns, and they went down into those tunnels,
and it could get real hairy some of the traps,
like you were mentioning, Matt that are down in those tunnels,
and just the things that are waiting for you, and
you just never know where you're gonna go. You're in
the dark, and it's it's one of those if I
I need my light to see, but if I have
my light to see that I'm giving away my positions.

(42:50):
So it's you know, real hairy. Where the the Vietcong
they've got a little mapped out. They know, you know,
you run so far down here, then you go over
the bamboo stick pit down below that's tipped with pooh
and things like that. You know, it's just or the
one that's full of water or snakes or whatever, you know,
whatever whatever they got going on. But it's still They

(43:11):
did a pretty nice job at showing him coming into
the major rooms and place where they were, you know,
tending the wound. And I don't think they expected somebody
to come up through the tunnel. You see, he gets
the end, climbs up, shoots a couple of them that
are waiting on the other side. Uh So those are
the guys that basically evacuated, evacuated the little village or
whatever you want to call that, that they were hide down
and they were just waiting to hear the explosions. Probably

(43:33):
that explosion on that guy that picks up that animal
box with all that documentation in there and comes out
with no arms to brutal, brutal, brutal brutal.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah, yeah, I almost think that. I mean, I don't know,
maybe they did. I would have thought that it would
be a smart move that make sure that every platoon
carries an engineer in there, you know what I'm saying
for especially for how many booby traps that they would
always be facing.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
And I imagine, like.

Speaker 4 (43:59):
You know, all wars, for the most part, whenever you'd
have one, I would imagine it'd be a good idea
to attach an engineer so that they can, like, you know,
help out with those type of situations and make those
type of judgment calls like hey, I don't touch anything.
I mean, I mean, we already talked about how much
adrenaline they probably have going through the system, like twenty

(44:21):
four to seven. So making good judgments calls is probably
not like a surefire thing, despite the fact that it's
a day in and day out the same. Yeah, yeah, man,
that dude was fucked up. Man, absolutely fucked up. I actually,
a long time ago, I was talking to this dude
who was a he was in the Marines in Vietnam,

(44:43):
and yeah, he did talk about that tim how like
they would set traps, they would piss and shit on
the trap bikes and stuff just so that it would
infect someone and then they would have to It would
injure someone, maybe not kill them, it would injure someone.
You know, platoon would have to do is take two
healthy people to bring back the injured person. Dwidle down
their numbers to something little bit more manageable. But that's

(45:06):
guerrilla warfare, you know.

Speaker 6 (45:08):
Yeah, yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
I think to your point, I think modern day warfare
they do have engineers, but it's it's a lot different
as I said, one oh one, don't touch a damn thing.
And that's what those guys are told. You go into buildings,
you don't touch anything. You clear them out. You wait
till you secure the area. Then the engineers will come
through and they'll start checking everything. And you're not touching
any of that stuff. You are not taking any trophies home,

(45:29):
you're not grabbing any kind of coin age. There's no
there's no looting for fear that it will kill you, you know.
But I think in Vietnam the differences unlike you know,
Iraq and other you know wars that we fought, there's
a front. Yeah, you come in, you fight a battle,
you secure location. Then the group comes in behind you,

(45:50):
the engineers and stuff to check it out, you know,
to secure the area, get rid of all the booby traps,
the minefields, all that kind of stuff, and you move
forward to keep pressing the front. Vietnam was we're going
to fight for this muddy hill or this tiny little
village hut over here, and we're going to kill the enemy,
and then we're going to leave, and then we're going

(46:10):
to come back tomorrow when the enemy comes back, and
we're going to do it all over again in vain,
and they never really had a front a lot of times,
so there was no ability for them to have these
engineers come in after the fact that these aren't even
easily areas that you can secure.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
No.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Yeah, and I think those tunnels, some of them ran
nearly the length of the entire fucking country.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah, that you could.

Speaker 4 (46:34):
You couldn't have a front because yeah, you secure this hill,
but one of those one of those tunnels goes behind
your lines.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
It was such a different war in the way that
it was fought. Again, they just they're like, let's get in,
let's kill everybody, and let's just get the hell out
of here before something bad happens to us. So I
think it forced their hand a lot of times to
be like, oh, look here's a bunch of you know, intel,
we should take this again, get behind something and get
a big stick.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (47:06):
Then they get to command that they need to move
from that position to go secure a villain. And as
they're looking around for the rest of their crew, they
find that one of their guys is missing, poor Manny,
And they finally find him just outside of the encampment,
and of course, you know, he's been laid to waste.
You know, he's strung up, he's got his neck cut.
You can see that the VC got them, and that

(47:27):
kind of heightens everybody that. You know, Barnes' group is
definitely angry. I mean they are like full fledged. They're
ready to just cut down everybody. And we see, like
Tim had mentioned, you know, the two different aspects of
the groups. You know, you've got beer drinkers and the
hell raisers, and you have the guys that are like
kind of moral ambiguity, but yet they still have a code.

(47:49):
They go into the village and Barnes is just ready
to lay waste to everybody. I mean he's he winds
up shooting the woman that is the wife to the
village chief, and he threatens to kill their daughter. They've
brutalized a guy, a guy who only had one leg,
winds up like one eye too, Yeah, smashing smashing the

(48:10):
butt of their guns into them. I mean, it's just
it's just brutal. What happens to these this area where
they're non combatants. China light into what happened in Vietnam
at this time, and just your guys's opinions on what
we see here.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Well, I think what really sets them off is not
only do they find their guy and he strung up,
but there's a piece of paper on it, and they
don't really explain this swell. But what that piece of
paper is is it's a South Vietnam safe conduct passed.
So they would pass these papers out to the North
Vietnamese Army in the viet Cong and hopes that they
would surrender and it would give them safe conduct back

(48:45):
into the lines. And so that was them basically strapping
that piece of paper to to was it was manny right, yeah,
Manny as a taunt. Basically that was them just flipping
them the bird, gotcha, saying screw you, screw your arm
and screw your safe conduct. You know, we don't want
you here and we're going to force you out. That
in turn sets them off. So now when they head

(49:07):
in this village, they're looking for blood because again the
problem not only was the fronts or the lack of one,
but you didn't know who to trust. Is the NVA,
the North Vietnamese Army proper that are uniformed, but so
many more or not, it's just the viet Cong. They're
just wearing as they call it, the black pajamas or whatever.
You can't tell who's the enemy and who's not. You know,

(49:28):
they have suicide bombers all the time. They're strapping them
on the kids, women, whatever, you know, doing all kinds
of stuff. So you don't know who to trust. So
when you get into a village and you find guns
like that, and a lot of times that the Vietcong
would come in and they would force these poor villagers like,
you know, look, you were going to keep these guns
here for uced. You were going to you know, farm
your farm, but you're going to keep most of the

(49:49):
food for us, and we're going to bring more for
you the store and when we come back, we expect
it to be here so that we have it. So
they would make these forced stage you know, staging grounds
for the military because they're always on the move all
the time. When our guys would get there, all they
understood was these people are helping the Vietcong and the
North Vietnamese army. Therefore they must be conspirators, you know,

(50:10):
and so we should have no mercy on them. And
no matter what those villagers are going to say to Barnes,
it's not going to matter.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
Right if we take a look at gorilla warfare in
the past before this, say like in the Civil War
when the South was both the North and the South
were using gerrilla warfare tactics, but it was the North
who actually was like, I forget it, we ain't entertaining
this no more, and they got real dirty. And that's
what gorilla warfare invites. Nobody wins. Warfare is very ugly.

(50:43):
And when you're doing it if the other side, if
you're doing it to the other side and the other
side's like, we're done with this, you're inviting them to
say the famous words all's fair and love and war right,
and then all of a sudden, the gloves are off,
and that means your entire so pavilion population are now
considered the enemy. Yeah, and that's that is the danger

(51:06):
of inviting the tactic of guerrilla war to your strategy.
I'm not, obviously, I'm not justifying that any of those
type of actions is going to be right, because war
is bad in general, but that is the natural consequence.
That is what's going to happen, whether it be something
that is directive from central command or if it's just

(51:28):
something that happens like we see here on screen in
a natural human condition like this is just this is
just what happened. You know, people got on edge and
they're sick and tired of not knowing who to trust,
and now everyone's the enemy, especially.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
When they start finding they find a body, and.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
Then they find weapons, and then they find enough rice
to feed the entire you know VCA. It's like, okay, yeah,
you know, I think that's a license to kill at
that point. At least that's what they're thinking, right, It's
a license to kill and that we could do no
wrong at this point. And I think that's what Barnes'
crew was kind of thinking and not thinking of the

(52:05):
humanity aspect of it.

Speaker 6 (52:07):
Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely a scene.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
That it shows them slipping further into into madness and
and just the feeling of, you know, they're in a
bad situation.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
It's just human uh, you know, to humanizing them. You
could only be subjected to so much before you become
dumb and it doesn't matter anymore. I'm sure it was
no different for our troops at the end of World
War Two when they were finding all those naz death
camps too. I mean, there was a certain point where
it was like, you know what, anybody we find out
these camps were just killing. It's just that simple. There's

(52:37):
no question about it. We're just going to put a
bullet in their head because of all this pain and
suffering that we are witnessing, the you know, the inhuman
ways that these people were treated. Just after a certain
point you're like, no.

Speaker 5 (52:49):
But you know, there is there is one shining light
of or silver lining of hope. I would I would say,
and that's what Chris's character. You know, after he goes
to that dark spot and you know, basically tortures the
guy with one leg, he then kind of, I would
almost say, kind of redeems his character and the fact
that he saves those girls that are being graped by

(53:10):
the uh, the other soldiers. It's an interesting take on
the story where he's he finally like he snaps, but
then he like comes to he realizes that hey, you
know what, these are still people, and he shows that
by saving the saving those those two girls, and you know,
even yells at his fellow soldiers they you know, come on,
these are human beings.

Speaker 6 (53:29):
For crying out loud.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
I feel like it was it was what Bunny did
that pulled him back off the edge of the cliff
because he was right there with him, and then Bunny
just kicked it up to eleven man and he's just
like start smashing that guy's head with that shotgun. He's like,
oh man, I've seen a skull coming apart like that.
I'd never seen a brain like that before. And I
think at that moment it snaps him out of it.
He's like, what the fuck am I doing? You know,

(53:51):
it's just like, holy shit, this is this is for real,
Like we ain't fucking around, like people are gonna are dying,
you know, because I'm angry. So I think that that
was the moment that kind of snaped me out. But
I think also it's a difference between somebody who's only
been in country for a limited time versus like Tom Berenger.
This is obviously this guy is probably second third or

(54:13):
fourth tour. I mean, this guy's hardcore. He's in it
to win it, you know, like this is right, this
is what he does, and so he's he's dark into it.
I think the Bunny character, I don't know how long
that guy's been there. He's probably been there for just
this is his first tour. But he's just not right then,
that guy's just he's like I like it here, I
told the priest, I like it. Nobody messages with you.
Get do whatever you want, you know, Like, yeah, he's

(54:34):
he's a couple of cards short of deck for sure.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:37):
I'm sure if a psychologists evaluate him he find him
to be a sociopath.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
Well, I mean that's I I think that that's just
one of those characters that is important in this film
to kind of show you how you get a film
like Rambo. You know what I mean, you got, you
got you can do pretty much anything and kill anyone,
and then you come back home. And that's the you know,
the famous you know, the war comes home type of scenario,

(55:05):
you know, where you have all these people who are
trained to be ruthless killers and now they're part of
your society.

Speaker 6 (55:12):
Right.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Yeah, it's a it's a problem waiting to happen.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
How many those guys came back and you hear family
members all the time like I don't know what happened
over there, but you know our son or our nephew
or you know, grantson or he didn't come back. The
same the person that left us that the same person
that came back.

Speaker 5 (55:29):
Two of my uncles went to Vietnam, and only one
of them's. One of them is still a live today
that went there, and he suffers from night terrors and
he can't watch war movies anymore because it just it
triggers so much with him.

Speaker 6 (55:42):
And I mean, he was very quiet about it.

Speaker 5 (55:45):
You wouldn't tell us a whole lot of stories, But
I think over the last five years or so, he's
been kind of opening up with some of the things
that he's seen and talked to us about.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
Man, Actually, a long time ago, I was working at
this place where I was bartender, and this dude would
always come in and one time he told me that,
you know he was he was a helicopter pilot. And
he told me some of the statistics too. He said
something something crazy like nine out of ten helicopter pilots

(56:14):
like died in a span of like I think it
was something like six months or something. It's crazy, absolutely crazy.
This guy actually lived through that well.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Even Dale died. Witness Oliver Stone suffering attack of post
traumatic syndrome on the set when they were filming the
village scene. He just had a complete breakdown because reliving
this just just threw him into a bad place. And
so they kind of had to sit down and had
a good cry together, I guess, and you know, talked

(56:43):
on in their mutual experiences over there and everything and
kind of helped each other through it or whatever. But
they just filming this just had a really negative, you know,
impact on Alba as he was doing this, and I
imagine the stress. I mean, as we've heard just making
films as a whole be really difficult, and you know,
these guys are basically they did this movie. I think,
I'm like fifty two days and are over the Philippines,

(57:05):
you know, filming it and making it about as real
as they can. And it's still I mean, it's only
what eighty six, So that's that's not too you know,
not too far off. I mean, it's if you really
think about it from the.

Speaker 5 (57:15):
Actual war, I mean you're looking at like roughly twenty years. Yeah,
I mean that's like us today talking about two thousand
and five. You know, it seems like yesterday.

Speaker 6 (57:26):
Yeah. So after the whole village sequence, Elias winds up
forming their commander of what happened and intends to file
a report against Barnes for the illegal killing. On their next.

Speaker 5 (57:38):
Patrol, though, the platoon is ambushed and overwhelmed and Barnes
orders a retreat, but goes back into the jungle alone
and intentionally shoots and wounds Alias. Now that brings me
this question. Guys, if you're Elias and you just had
this confrontation with Barnes and you know he's strung out,
are you going to go right up right away and
report him or would you kind of hang back and

(57:59):
wait a little.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
I think he was hoping that if you reported them,
they were going to pull him off the line, but
they were so stratched for manpower there was just no
way that's going to happen. Plus, you're trying to report
this about probably one of the best warriors they've got
in the group, in the platoon, you know, So it's like,
not only do you want me to pull this guy
for a review, but you want me to pull one

(58:21):
of the people that's going to make the biggest difference, because,
let's face it, I mean, it was his platoon. It
definitely wasn't the lieutenants at all. The lieutenant was just
he was just taking up space Yeah, he's a West
Point graduate that has no idea what he's doing, and
he's trying to pretend to be in charge, you know,
Lieutenant Will versus battle hardened Barns, who's like, look, you

(58:42):
just stay out of my way and I'll keep the
men alive and I'll get the objectives done. So and
I think, what, even though he witnessed what happened too,
I mean, because he was there, I think he's just
gotten to the point too where he's like, I just
don't give a shit anymore.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
He says that. I think that's the quote.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Yeah, I believe right, because he's a little kind of
fun on down that rabbit hole as well, where he's like,
look what they did to our guy. Fuck these people,
you know, I don't. I don't give a ship. You know,
look we got the answers we needed. We you know,
we got our call for command. Burn the fucking village
down to the ground. Screw them. You know, you got
your orders, do it, and we're moving on. So, you know,

(59:17):
he's just hit his point to where he's just I
can overlook this. It's what's one more person than the
grand scheme of things. Elias's biggest issues that he's trying
to press it, and you know what, you it was
not smart too, because you're running around with guys with
guns like you piss them off.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
You Yeah, killers, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
You're if you're gonna keep because he's like, we're gonna
keep pressing this, you'll get my report and stuff. Now
he should have just let that ship drive.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
My my goal would be to stay as far away
from this guy and make sure he's never at my back.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
Yeah. Ever, yeah, I wouldn't have said anything either. Man.

Speaker 4 (59:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
I just I don't know. I get it.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
I mean, if you're gonna try to do something, I
guess that's really the only way about it. But obviously
that's not really a good solution. So probably nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
And the saying goes, pick your battles, Yeah, yeah, And
I would add to that, if you're gonna pick your battles,
make sure you pick the appropriate time for the battle.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
Yeah, and pick a situation that you know you're gonna win,
because you know, he definitely puts the wedge between him
and Barnes, and as we can see, they're back in
another firefight and Barnes is basically going back to get
a Lias quote get Alias. He got Alias, And that
scene you just kind of kind of see it delivered

(01:00:32):
in each other's eye because the foe comes walking out
of the forest, he sees Barnes there and he gives
that that smile, that the defoe smile that just looks
like the Green Goblin.

Speaker 6 (01:00:44):
So there's a Spider Man. There's a Spider Man.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Reference for the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Well, it was a think God, it's you and not
of Vietnamese, you know, I think was what that smile was. Yeah,
He's like.

Speaker 5 (01:00:53):
Yeah, And then you can see it in Barnes' eyes,
is that he just kind of shifts and goes, okay,
I know I could take him out, and he shoots them.

Speaker 6 (01:01:00):
Barnes was smart.

Speaker 5 (01:01:00):
He would have walked over there and checked, but he
didn't before you know, turning tail and heading out. And
that's of course when he runs into Chris and basically
outright lies to Chris is yeah, he's dead, you know,
without even checking in.

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
How cool that fight scene was. I think this was probably,
for me, one of the coolest fight scenes that we
had throughout the whole movie, maybe rivaling that last one,
but I like this one a lot, especially because you
had Chris. Actually, you see his evolution really happen here.

(01:01:37):
He was up to this point kind of like behind
the scenes, not really do it too much, following orders
and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
But when this happens, he like straight up shifts in
like hero mode. Man.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
He's like going from you know, cover to cover, trying
to help out, trying to do things. He's killing dudes,
and then he like brings something he brings back. I
can't remember who he brought back. Was it Forrest Whittaker's character.
I don't remember who he brought back. He brought someone
back to the church, and then he went with Sergeant

(01:02:09):
Elias and all these dudes there's just like straight up like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
Just moving around.

Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
They didn't carry it pretty much anything with them besides
the shirt on their back.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Guns and animal that's it. That's like all they had.

Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
Yeah, and they's they're like warriors, man, Like these dudes
are straight up warriors, especially Sergeant Elias. Man, oh my god, guys,
straight up running gun. You see how many he killed,
Like this dude was single handedly taken. I mean it
was amazing. It was such a good scene. I was
just like, dang, man, this dude is a warrior, you know,
that coupled with the betrayal. I think it really hurt.

(01:02:42):
It really hits hard because you're like, dude, this this
guy has got some serious skill.

Speaker 6 (01:02:47):
You did mention this this battle on.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
It's kind of cool that we see.

Speaker 5 (01:02:50):
A progression with the battles too, because when we start off,
we get that little one that where you know, Chris
gets hurt.

Speaker 6 (01:02:56):
But after that they keep getting bigger and bigger.

Speaker 5 (01:02:59):
You know, they mounting to something, which is of course,
at the end of the movie, the Quiet Moment, and
it adds more to the storytelling because of these these
larger battles that you keep getting leveled up to to
take a gamer's point of view, you know. Any thoughts
on Elias's death, Tim Oh, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
It's incredible scene. It's it's an incredibly powerful scene. It's
I mean, it's it's the cover of of almost every
copy of a DVD, VHS, Blu ray, whatever it is.
I mean, it's it's you know, him on his knees
with his arms up in the air. I just it's
one of those scenes you don't forget. I think the
only sad part is that Chris he knew something was up,

(01:03:42):
even if Elias didn't believe that Berenger would do something.
Chris is like, now, this dude, this dude's something's going
to go wrong here, you know. And when he was
the marranger told him he was dead. I thought for
sure Chris was going to go double check, and he didn't,
and I think that that was sad. But I can
also see where it's like, well, I don't want to
go charging towards the end if this guy's dead, you know,

(01:04:04):
just to be like, yeah, okay, he's dead.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
So well, I mean, to be fair, it was a
half truth.

Speaker 4 (01:04:10):
Yeah, yeah, he thought that he was dead, and he
knew that there were swarming VC, and there were there
were swarms of VC, so right, it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
A complete lie. Yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
And I think that kind of beat Chris ups a
lot more than anyone else who felt the pain and
loss of Sergeant Elias, right well, because.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
He idolized Elias. You know, Elias was like his mentor.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Yeah yeah, and he was there, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
He's seen the lie. He knew the lie for what
it was, yes, but he still didn't go check. Yeah,
you know, and to to get on a chopper to
evac out of a situation like that and see that
you left a man behind. That's and to know that
you possibly could have saved him, that's got a way
heavy on your soul a little bit. You know. It's

(01:04:58):
so to watch him get gon because he doesn't get
just shot once or twice. I mean, they are just
riddling his body full of bullets. That guy, he gave
it as all. He just absolutely gave it as all,
and he just it just wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna
come to fruition. He wasn't gonna get saved. And then
that is where Chris is like, all I can do

(01:05:18):
now is try to wrong this right, and so it
starts the embers of that anger and that need for revenge,
you know, in his soul.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
Justice I like to call it.

Speaker 5 (01:05:32):
I said, I'm sure Chris's Chris's guilt over the whole
situation definitely lights the fire to really stoke his anger
towards Barnes. I mean to the point where even later on,
you know, when they're back at their their base, you know, Taylor,
you know, thoroughly realizes that Barne is responsible for Elias's death,
and he unsuccessfully tries to get his comrades to help

(01:05:55):
frag Barnes in retaliation and just to all of a
sudden realize that barn just right out the door and
he hears he had to have heard the if not
the entire conversation, at least the meat part of it,
because here he comes in. He goes, oh, you're talking
about killing Yeah, and you know, you get this long
speech Barnes, and you just kind of see that he
not only is he like big on surviving, but he's

(01:06:18):
he's willing to like kill anybody, kill anything, because he's
just just the amount of horror that he's been through.
And that, of course is then just causes Taylor to
trip and he, you know, he takes a swing at Barnes,
but you know, Barnes lays him out, and it isn't
for the rest of the guys that you know, convinced Barnes, no,
don't don't kill Taylor. You're gonna finish spending like ten

(01:06:40):
years and in Leavenworth.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
You know, I think that Barnes at that point probably
did feel a sliver of guilt, but at the same
time justifies the action by saying like that there's division
within the squad, within the platoon and that division will
get people killed. So I think to some extent, I

(01:07:04):
think he was justifying his action despite the fact he
I think deep down probably knew that it wasn't right right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Well, thisaw it also reinforces the undertones again of Alverstone's
belief of, you know, alcohol fueled anger versus you know,
a much more sane and reasonable person that just smokes dope,
because that's the thing. He's like, oh, you guys are
always in here smoking this dope. I don't need that stuff,
you know, I don't I don't need any of that

(01:07:32):
to get through this. And he grabs that bottle jacket
and he's drinking it. So it's it's showing the the
odd you know, marijuana versus alcohol, Like, yeah, quest that
you know, Alverstone's on to kind of prove his point
on that, which so there's that undertone of his messaging.
But yeah, it's it's just an interesting scene.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
I don't know, man, I always thought that that it
was kind of interesting that they were inside of a
whole in the ground, like maybe Oliver Stone had read
a lot of j R. Token and he was like,
you know what, we could very well call this place
Bag and this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Is where it all happens. This is a this is
a segue for.

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
All of you guys. Check out The Lord of the Rings.
We've got the Fellowship, so check those out. It's great,
it's it's a real great podcast, especially if you're really
interested in hearing about fantasy movies.

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
So so there you go, guys.

Speaker 6 (01:08:33):
Elias is actually uh bilbo is that is that what
you're saying?

Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
You know that we're all smoking centerund smoking Toby, Yes,
old Toby.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
He stood up clearly during one part and say welcome
to Bagging.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
They have a pipe, you know, you know, so yeah,
good podcast, listen in watch on YouTube, all that good stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:08:59):
Well, of course, you know, after this confrontation, we didn't
we then lead up to basically the I would say,
the final battle of the movie, like a Helm's Deep
kind of battle.

Speaker 6 (01:09:12):
You know, we're.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
That was the last one.

Speaker 6 (01:09:17):
Honest, it's the last one.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
All right, don't forget everybody like and subscribe.

Speaker 5 (01:09:22):
Yeah, yeah, So the final battle basically serves as the
explosive climax for both the war and the internal struggle
for Chris's soul, you know, overrun, the depleted platoon is
sent back to the front lines and is overrun by
a massive NBA assault. Much of the Lutune, including Barnes's
remaining followers, are killed in the chaotic battle, which is

(01:09:45):
ended by an American air strike on their position.

Speaker 6 (01:09:48):
Let's talk a little bit about about that whole battle sequence.
Right up to the air strike.

Speaker 5 (01:09:53):
They're just overwhelmed and the choices that they're being made
to make to cover their position. I can't think of
the gentleman's name who took over Elias's spot as sergeant,
but he's told to set up two bunkers on either
side of this of this crevass, and he's like, if
I do that, there's with all that jungle, there's plenty

(01:10:14):
of room for the entire army to come marching through there.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
And you know I sergeant Read.

Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
Yes, Red clearly has the history, has the knowledge. But
the lieutenant just doesn't care. I mean he even says,
you know, I don't care. Do what you do what
I tell you to do. So you can definitely see
that the lieutenant really isn't that great of a that
competent of a of a lieutenant.

Speaker 6 (01:10:34):
In my opinion, what did you guys think of that?

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
The whole lead up to this this fight, and I'll
go to you first attempt, since you're our war correspondent.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
Oh, it's a it's a shit show, dude. They already knew,
they knew it was gonna be bad. I mean, they're
all sitting around going, oh, I got a bad feeling
about this and all that kind of stuff. But at
one point they found a couple of Vietnamese guys that
had maps at all of their foxholes already staked out,
like they knew where all these guys are at. As

(01:11:03):
soon as I heard, you know, would have heard that.
I'm like, I'm going to go over here and dig
a new hole because I'm not staying in these holes
where they know where they're at. And the other thing
is that the Vietnamese they just keep coming. There's so
many of them. They just it's an overwhelming force thing.
And not only do they know where you're at, they've
been whittling you down and now they're just going to

(01:11:23):
keep coming, wave after wave after wave, and they're just
going to overrun you. And they know they can do it.
And they got these guys hopped up on drugs, you know. There,
they get all these guys hopped up on heroin and
everything else on that side before they send them over,
you know, to attack the US forces. So they have
no fear. They're just going to charge into ahale of

(01:11:44):
bullets and just go, you know, all kinds of mad
war crazy on this. So it's going to be a
bad situation. And again they've got a few fox holes
and the guys right there's you know, we don't have
enough people that you could drive. You could drive several
tanks through between these five holes. And not only does
the lieutenant not care, but what's he gonna do. He
can't get reinforcements. There's nobody else. It's just like this

(01:12:06):
one's got to work with it. You know, I can't
do nothing for you. And there's no front, there's no walls,
there's no buildings, there's there's no fortifications. They're not elevated,
you know, on a hill or anything. It's just flat
ground in the middle of the jungle, in a hole.
That's it. It's just it's it just begs for the slaughter,
absolutely does. And you're not on your home turf. You've

(01:12:28):
come in there, you quickly dug in your positions and
you're finding a group of hardened military army that is
entrenched literally in the ground with tunnels and reinforcements and
and knows exactly where you're at. Yeah, it's it's again
just a shit show.

Speaker 5 (01:12:45):
Yeah, and a lot of from what I understand, a
lot of battles were like that. What about you, uh, Rick,
what do you would you think of of the NBA assault?

Speaker 4 (01:12:55):
I mean, I thought it was pretty interesting that, like,
you know, most of the characters were knew some was up.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
They knew it was bad. Everyone had a bad feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
And right before the battle happens, that's when King gets
his leave, you know, he gets he gets to get out. Yeah,
and Chris and him had a few moments to talk,
and Chris comes to some epiphany about the dynamics of
war and that it's you know, it's all it's all bullshit,
you know, I mean, it's it's it doesn't make any sense.

(01:13:27):
It's it's uh, it's pretty much, it's all bad. And
it's the ship that they're in and now they have
to deal with it. And you know, he's he's got
his tenure that he's got to fulfill that he signed
up for. At this point, you know, yeah, he's kind
of come a long way from joining on some as
King says it in the early beginnings of this movie,

(01:13:47):
as some crusade to where he's at now, where he actually,
you know, he's seeing clearly and no longer with rose
colored glasses of the propaganda and glorification of war.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
He sees what it really is and how ugly it is.

Speaker 4 (01:14:01):
And I think that is one of the messages here
that while there's a lot of propaganda around war and
it's it's it's not something good though it's bad, it's
all bad.

Speaker 5 (01:14:13):
Yeah, Yeah, the truth is it's a it's a horrible
and ugly and gruesome thing that just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
And and when it comes to the battle again, Chris Man,
he's got he's developed his instincts, he's developed his fighting skills,
and he just absolutely goes ham. He he knows when
to hold him and when to fold him. He'd be seen.
I'm for real that he like picked up It seemed
like he picked up at least some bit of Vietnamese,

(01:14:41):
if not being able to interpret what's gonna happen next,
because in that battle there, Foxhole gets shot with a
freaking RPG. Yeah, you know, he saw it coming, whether
he could understand what the VC was saying, or he
could just kind of deduce and figure it out. This
is what was gonna happen next he he saved what's
his name, the guy who was in the foxhole with him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
He's like, yo, we got to get the hell out.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
Of here, and then went when this got blown up,
went that right back in. He stayed in for a
little bit, and then all of a sudden, he's like
he's like hopped up on adrenaline and he's like, no, man,
I ain't staying right here. I got to run around
this jungle. I'm a running gun and take out dudes
like left and right and stuff. And man, he was
doing a good job.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
He was doing a.

Speaker 4 (01:15:24):
Real good job of it until he saw barns that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
That's pretty much when that ended.

Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
Yeah, yeah, I got it, he said, was Francis Francis
there you go, Francis, Yeah, Francis. Actually I think it's
the last line in the film, and I'll get to
that in a moment, but yeah, so yeah, I mean
that whole fight sequence, the whole battle with the NBA
coming in, and it's definitely a huge difference from what
we've seen earlier in the movie, because I think earlier

(01:15:52):
in the movie it was more like Viet Cong's whereas
this was like the full blown actual North Vietnamese army
that was coming in and just marching through. Yeah, the
NBA managed to get through. Taylor's line is through his
platoon to like the main hold of the rest of
the of the of our army, and we start seeing
the suicide bombers and they of course take out the

(01:16:13):
the forward radio room, and they wind up blowing up
that and h end up killing Oliver Stone, our director,
and that sequence Captain Harris played by Dale Die that
basically saves the day by radio in and airstrike and
has the entire area just bombarded. And they even say, hey,

(01:16:34):
you know what, we can't tell the difference between friend
and foe, so dig in deep.

Speaker 6 (01:16:38):
You know, we're dropping everything. Would you guys, would you
guys think of of the that air strike.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
I can't imagine. I can't imagine even being involved in
something like that. It's just and again another way will
copy that. Years later, we were soldiers, they did the
same thing. Broken Arrow. That's it, Broken Arrow. Just drop
everything you got in our you know, on our position.
You know, everybody everybody's just got to get down and
hope they survive it. It's just crazy. And they're not
just dropping bombs, man, they're dropping napalm and everything. They

(01:17:03):
guy he's like anything you guys got left, because they
call him, They're like, we don't have that much left
and we can only make one more pass. He's like,
drop everything. So it's it's gonna get crazy, you know.
And even if you don't get hit by shrapnel or
by you by napalm, the concussions alone probably gonna blow
out your ear drums and just beat them every living
shit out of you. So it's not a good situation.

(01:17:25):
But I guess once you realize you're completely overrun and
there's there's nowhere to go because I want guy's like, oh,
we got to retreat. He's like, where you gonna go?
There's nowhere to go. We are completely surrounded. All you
can do is stand and fight. I mean, that's it.
That's all these guys have left is just try to
you know, get into a circle and just keep them out,
you know. And it yeah, it's just they were gonna win.

(01:17:47):
If they didn't do that, they were gonna die. So
it's better to try to chance that I think then
just die at the hands of of several thousand angry Vietnamese.

Speaker 5 (01:17:59):
And you know, after that whole situation, you know, we
come to and it's it's like the next morning, and
we see Taylor, uh basically dazed and wounded, and he
regains his consciousness any any and we find that the
battlefield is just littered with corpses of Vietnamese, of of
our soldiers, you know, and any spots a seriously wounded

(01:18:22):
Barnes crawling away, and Barnes, knowing his fate is sealed,
challenges Taylor to kill him. And Taylor, of course complies
and shoots Barnes dead and avenges Elias. And in my opinion,
it felt good to see justice prevail over the death
of Elias. But another part of me is like just
condensed that this is just further showing the downfall of

(01:18:45):
poor Taylor's soul, you know, having to take a fellow
soldier's life.

Speaker 6 (01:18:50):
You know, what would you guys think of this whole scene?

Speaker 3 (01:18:52):
Yeah, I think that that's a good way to put it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:55):
You even see his remorse on the helicopter ride back,
whether it was the remorse specifically due to his actions
regarding Barnes or his actions as a whole out here
killing other human beings. I think that kind of knew
that it was probably gonna have to happen, you know.
Like I think, like we had mentioned, he's kind of

(01:19:15):
beating himself up that he didn't go help out Elias
when he may have been able to. And I think
it's kind of like one of those things that he
probably felt like he had to do, especially because the
situation was delivered to him on a silver platter, you know.
I think at the heat of the moment that night before,
I don't think that that was what his intentions would

(01:19:36):
have been. I think at that point they were still
allies in the heat of combat, and because Barnes seemed
like he was about to kill him. Barnes looked like
he was literally going to kill Chris right before that
bomb dropped. I think if he was on the fence,

(01:19:56):
I think that put him over the fence. In the morning,
you know, maybe upon reflecting about it for just a
half a moment and be like, look, this dude was
straight up gonna kill me the night before, in the
heat of battle. We had plenty of other people to kill,
plenty of other enemies, not knowing that he was, you know,
gonna get helicoptered out of there. I think it was,

(01:20:17):
you know, just another reason why he knew he had
to do it, despite the fact that I don't think
that he wanted.

Speaker 6 (01:20:22):
To, right. What about you, Tim, What are your thoughts
on the divines of Barnes.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
I kind of thought about it, and the moment before
the bombs drop and you got Barnes over Chris, I
think he's in full on bloodlust at that point. I'm
not even sure he realized it was Chris. But even
with that said, Chris has already called him out on
killing Elias. He's attacked him, He's made himself a target too,

(01:20:50):
and he's already knows that Barnes killed Elias because they disagree.
Even if I thought the guy might not have been,
you know, totally one hundred percent there in the rows
of you know, war warfare, bloodlust, I don't think I'm
gonna take that chance, especially with that look that camera
shot of that's a money shot there that you know

(01:21:10):
that the eyes glowing red and he's over the top
of him getting ready to just smashing his skull, and
you know, he got the bombs dropping behind him, and
that's a that's a that is one hundred percent money
shot right there. Oliver Stone nails it. But yeah, I
wake up the next morning. I'm not gonna take that
chance that that guy's still alive, you know, And and
he's treating him like shit. Even then he's like, ah,

(01:21:31):
go get me a medic. Come on, go get me
a medic. And he's like, he looks at him.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
I think he throws a boy in there.

Speaker 4 (01:21:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Yeah, and then he's like, oh he could like he
he has that same dawning moment that Olia says. He's like, shit,
I think this guy's gonna shoot me. I don't think
he has the balls though, and he's like, go ahead,
shoot me. And the one thing that Charlie Sheen did
right that Barnes didn't, and I shouldn't say this, but
I'm going to he picked up an AK because if

(01:21:59):
there's any question that somebody's like, you know, I've seen
Barnes alive and then he's dead, and I think that,
you know, Chris did it. Simply if they do an autopsy,
they're going to find AK rounds in him, and not
AR rounds, which are going to have distinctly different holes,
even if there's not a round in him, right, because
AR rounds are very small and fast rounds or like
a twenty two bullet with a massive amount of gun

(01:22:20):
pottery behind him, and AK round is the kind of
rounds you shoot that like, you know, we'll chop a
tree down because it's just a big freaking round. So
that's what makes that gun a little more unruly than
the AARs. So there will be no question that supposedly
he was shot by the right. I don't and I'm
probably thinking far too much into it. I don't know

(01:22:41):
if Chris was really planning that out. I think it
was just that was the gun that was convenient for
him to pick up. But in retrospect, from my perspective,
I'm like, well, at least if there's any question, they
can be like, oh no, look he was shot by
an enemy gun. So there's no way that Chris did this.
You know, he didn't come after him or whatever because
he was threatening to do it, right, and people hurt him,
so it kind of will absolve him at that good.

Speaker 5 (01:23:02):
Point to him, you know, And I did notice that
he has he was holding an AK forty seven instead
of his standard issue AR. So yeah, I kind of
had a little bit of that thought too, like, oh, hey,
if it comes back, you know, in the court martial
or something, you know, he was clearly shot with an
enemy round. So yeah, now after that sequence, we kind
of go around, we see the different people that have
survived the war or survived the battle, and we go

(01:23:25):
back to Francis, and I don't know if you guys
caught it or not, but you notice that Francis when
if he like comes out of the head, he kind
of like looks around, he pulls his knife out and
he ends up like I think he stabs himself. Did
I did I pick imagine that or did that? That
did happen?

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:23:41):
No, he definitely, yeah, he did that for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
No, he knew because he he survived and he you know,
because he hid under that body the whole night. And
then oh no he did. I'm sorry that was the
other guy, but he knew, he survived and he's unscathed,
but he's been wounded once before. So there is a
rule in the military that if you were shot twice
and you get a purple hart or whatever, that's it,

(01:24:04):
you get to go home unless you decide to stay
in country. That's your ticket home. So he's kind of like, well, shit,
nobody's looking. He just put that knife in his leg
because now I'm wounded right, and I'm going to get
to go home because it's unless somebody can tell that
it's not a bayonet hit. You know, they're pretty good
picking that stuff up, you know, just like the whole Oh,
I can't walk because I've got trench foot. No, you've

(01:24:26):
been spraying your feet with mosquito repellent. Like, the doctors
are pretty good and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):
Yeah, yeah, like Junior.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
So the doctors are pretty good at telling the difference between,
you know, what kind of wound you sustained by the weapons,
because they're patching people up all the time. But he
might get away with it, and he's so that's what
he's saying. He's like, oh, that we're both what it
would call it like tours or seconders or something like that, Yeah,
which means we've both been hit twice, so we're both
going home. That's it. We're done two times. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:24:53):
Yeah, And that's when we see we see both of
them loaded up on the helicopter and then we kind
of get the the voiceover monologue of Taylor as he
reflects on what he has learned. You know, he laments
about the battle for his soul between Barnes and Elias,
and that will stay with him, does leave with a
newfound understanding of the of the dual nature of man

(01:25:14):
and a sense of purpose. And I think that kind
of reflects what Rick had said earlier about, you know,
man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself. It's
definitely portrayed here with with Taylor and his last few
moments of this voiceover monologue. Rick, do you have any

(01:25:34):
any comments on the under that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:36):
I mean, you know, something that I did mention in
my notes on watching this early on actually is that
I really did like and appreciate the journalistic narration that
we have here through the eyes of Chris. I thought
that was really good that we get to hear the

(01:25:57):
internal monologue of our protagonist and to kind of get
a little bit more intimate with how he views on
a more personal level the things that are happening to
him and with him within this you know battle, within
all the battles in the war in general. I think

(01:26:19):
that that was very, very good, and I think it
adds to the storytelling as well as the character development,
especially when you consider that the journaling is heavy in
the beginning and it gets to a point throughout the
film where he even.

Speaker 3 (01:26:35):
I think he is right.

Speaker 4 (01:26:37):
I think it's right before this battle, he's talking to
King before King finds out, you know, he gets as leave.
King's like, Yo, don't you have a grandma or parents
or something like that, And at that point Chris is like, no,
It's like I don't have anyone, Like there's there's no one.
And I think I think he's kind of grown to
the park where he's just like, there's nothing that I

(01:26:58):
have to say that anyone can even relate to, So
it's not worth even saying.

Speaker 6 (01:27:03):
Right, Yeah, that's solid.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):
Yeah, that's a real solid observation.

Speaker 5 (01:27:06):
The way Oliver Stone conveys in the story how a
lot of these soldiers were writing home and at certain
points they just kind of stopped writing just because of
what they had, what they had witnessed. And I think
that's very poignant in this in this whole movie. Right here,
it is the movie is one hour and fifty three minutes,

(01:27:27):
and we've just covered it. Is it worth taking that
hour and fifty three minutes off your death clock.

Speaker 6 (01:27:32):
I'll go to you first, Rick, What do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
Is it all right?

Speaker 4 (01:27:35):
So I do have a final thought some of the
things I probably said. It might be a repeat, but
I'll say it all. Platoon is a fantastic Vietnam War
movie carries powerful messages on what's important in life and
how to conduct it. It's about It's a story about war,
It's atrocities, its ugliness, and how through it and learning

(01:27:56):
about it delves into the importance of enjoying the richness
of life, as well as presenting itself as a cautionary
tale against those who would glorify it. Personally, I think
some of the most powerful lessons in here are those
signifying the fact that all throughout history, even extending into
the current age, the rich and powerful use war as

(01:28:17):
a means to attain their goals at the expense of
the poor.

Speaker 3 (01:28:20):
With that being said, it's a definite watch.

Speaker 6 (01:28:23):
Gotcha? All right?

Speaker 3 (01:28:25):
Well?

Speaker 5 (01:28:26):
I do want to point out I like how you
almost reference Ozzy Osbourne and Warpigs. So if I was
giving out any points today, I'd give you a little extra.

Speaker 6 (01:28:35):
So all right, what about what about you? Tim?

Speaker 5 (01:28:39):
As our war correspondent, How does Platoon rank for you
on their death clock?

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
It's an absolute watch. Hey, there's no doubt about it.
This movie. What it does, I think, for the first
time really well is that it truly shows the horror
of war, because a lot of times war movies are
very patriotic and a little bit sterilized to make the

(01:29:06):
good guys look good and they're doing all the right things,
and you know, they don't really focus on the grunts,
the men that are on the ground fighting these dirty,
horrible wars and horrible conditions under really stressful situations that

(01:29:27):
can again, you know, break your morality and break your souls.
So I think Alvas don't capture that like no other
director to this point. And I think it's what makes
this movie so absolutely powerful. I mean, it's a great
story too. I mean, and again it stems from his
experiences over there. I mean, he gathered up all the

(01:29:48):
letters that he wrote to his family and went through
them and just kept pairing this down to write this movie,
to try to bring the most realistic version of Vietnam
that he could to the screen. Now, granted, we're seeing
the worst in the soldiers in this Now, this is
not how it all went. Not every soldier was like this.
This wasn't this wasn't the mainstay of our military there.

(01:30:12):
It was a very small, isolated, you know, incidents where
these atrocities this magnitude happened. But they did happen, and
he actually witnessed some of them. So he's like, I
got to tell the world about this. You know, they
need to know that this happened. Unfortunately, it overshadows all
the good soldiers that were in Vietnam and and the

(01:30:34):
good situations and the good things I don't want to
say that necessarily happening, but the good things that the
soldiers did there. You know, for the people. It wasn't
always just burning down their villages and doing horrible things
to them. But I still think it was a message
that needed to happen, and I think it brought it
to the forefront people in a way that no other
film had to this point. So yes, it's an absolute watch. Plus,

(01:30:56):
like I said, it's just a great story overall. Anyway,
it's it's not just a message.

Speaker 6 (01:31:01):
All right, well said.

Speaker 5 (01:31:04):
You know, going into this review, I was a soft no,
because you know, I've seen several different Vietnam war movies.
But I think after sitting here and talking to to
talking about it with you.

Speaker 6 (01:31:17):
Guys, I think it's it's changed my vote.

Speaker 5 (01:31:20):
I think I'm I'm I'm leaning more towards you guys.
I'm gonna go from a soft no to a definite yes. Yeah,
I agree with you. I do think it's worth taking
time off your death clock, just not only to to
kind of delve into Vietnam War and what it was
like for certain soldiers, but it also kind of shows,
as Tim had said, you know that the grunts, and

(01:31:42):
it also shows you like more of a diverse cast
than like a Full Metal Jacket, you know, because you
had a few characters in.

Speaker 6 (01:31:49):
There that were of a different color.

Speaker 5 (01:31:52):
But you know, and here you've got a mixed bag
of guys in this in this unit, in this platoon,
and you get to see different backgrounds and how they
interacted with each other. And I just thought this was
a great human not really a human interesting story, but
more like a human character story. So yeah, I'm I'm
definitely jenmingbo say yes. That's three yes' is across the board.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
Well, I think we even pointed out in Full Metal
Jacket too, that We love the first half of the movie,
you know, the whole boot Camp experienced everything. But I
think I at least brought up that I thought a
lot of the war aspect once they get in Vietnam
was a bit ridiculous. It was there was just a
lot of stupidity that was filmed in that that I

(01:32:36):
didn't seem very realistic to me. Where this one, there's
no question this is how it would be. There's there's
no doubt in my mind that the way is portrayed
here is a lot of.

Speaker 6 (01:32:46):
What happened over there, gotcha. You know I think we
make an awesome movie.

Speaker 5 (01:32:51):
Is if you took the first half of Full Metal
Jacket and then once they leave boot Camp, just stop
the movie there and put on Platoon. Yeah, and then
just change the character's name from from Chris to Joker
and your set.

Speaker 3 (01:33:06):
Hey, Tim, have you noticed.

Speaker 6 (01:33:08):
How long our episodes seem to go when we record.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Like, yeah, Matt, of course I have. I'm you know,
I'm one of the freaking editors.

Speaker 6 (01:33:22):
So yeah, yeah, I know.

Speaker 5 (01:33:27):
I mean we both have to deal with all the
UM's and the nose and the audio leveling. Don't get
me started on Joey's long diatribes about bad horror movies.

Speaker 2 (01:33:36):
Hey, those are well thought out opinions. Okay, okay, this
is a thirty second ad. All right, man, what is
your point?

Speaker 5 (01:33:44):
Well, there's this really cool service out there called pot
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Where can we get more info on this service, Matthew, Well,

(01:34:07):
it's right there in the name pot at it dot com.
If you love the podcast but you don't always have
time to edit, then check them out at pot at
it dot com. And hey, tell them, ma'am sins you
for a special twenty five percent justcunt on your first
six episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
Guys, really, Lloyd Kaufman is a freaking genius feedback.

Speaker 5 (01:34:30):
So yes, we have had feedback on YouTube and Spotify.
Thank you, folks for giving us at feedback. We love
hearing from you, so please leave us as much feedback
as you want. We'd like to know what you think
of the show. If you can email our show at
Manreview Podcast at gmail dot com and you can have
your email read.

Speaker 6 (01:34:49):
Right here on the show, or like I said, leave a.

Speaker 5 (01:34:52):
Comment at YouTube or Spotify and hopefully we'll get back
to you on those comments. So, now that we've covered Platoon,
what else have you been watching or what is worth
mentioning here on the show. And you know what, I'm
gonna go over to you first, Rick, because you tend
to have these really long titles, so I'm gonna give

(01:35:13):
you the full hour and a half to say what
title of what movie you're watching?

Speaker 4 (01:35:19):
Might take it long? No, not this time though, this time? Okay,
so quick mention. I just started watching The Boys season four.
I I don't think I'm four or so episodes in.
So far so good.

Speaker 6 (01:35:32):
That's I diabolical man.

Speaker 4 (01:35:35):
Yeah, yeah, so it's it's I mean, I don't know
how it ends and stuff, but so far, you know,
I'm into it. Let's see Demon Slayer. I know I
mentioned the last time I was on the podcast, I
wrapped up the the anime all but the movie that
actually is gonna be coming out in like a week's

(01:35:57):
time of our recording. So by the time this airs,
Infinity Castle, the movie will probably be out. I tried
to see if I can catch it on in Japanese
with the dubs, and I couldn't find it, at least
not yet. I'm looking very much looking forward to checking
that out because Demons Slayer it totally wasn't something I

(01:36:19):
was really interested in watching before.

Speaker 3 (01:36:21):
After having watched.

Speaker 4 (01:36:22):
It, it's a little bit playful and stuff, but it definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:36:25):
Is quality though definitely quality anime.

Speaker 4 (01:36:27):
However, all right, boys, listen, there's this one that I
have been watching for the past few years because it
seems like every two years they come up with another season.
It's based on a very beloved book by the name
of Wheel of Time. Amazon a few years ago decided
to bust this thing out into a move into a

(01:36:49):
television show adaptation, and boy, I'll tell you what. The
first two seasons were basically a couple seasons of woke man.

Speaker 3 (01:37:01):
Fan fiction like.

Speaker 4 (01:37:04):
And I say that based on the information I have
about the books, because it took you.

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):
Two seasons to figure that out.

Speaker 4 (01:37:12):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
I watched like two episodes of like Nope, I'm done.

Speaker 4 (01:37:15):
Yeah, well no, So here's the thing about that. As
I was watching, I was like, dude, this is like
this big book. You know, I knew that the book
was really hot, and I was like, it's got to
eventually get better. I was like, there's you can tell
by watching this that there's some serious depth here into
this universe and into the story. So I'm like, you

(01:37:36):
know what, I'll give it a shot. I'll watch it.
The first season was man, oh man, it was like real,
oh boy, man, it was hard right. The second season
was a little bit better, but geez, Louise man, men
could do nothing right, nothing right man. The third season,
on the other hand, they actually started to change the

(01:37:58):
paradigm a bit and it allowed for male characters to
actually be able to do things like in the in
the first two seasons, men could do nothing right.

Speaker 3 (01:38:09):
They had there, they were pointless.

Speaker 4 (01:38:11):
Matter of fact, there was even lines in the dialogue
that said men are worthless, Like men cannot do anything,
Like they can't do anything.

Speaker 6 (01:38:22):
Guys, the male characters.

Speaker 4 (01:38:24):
Yes, yes, yes, So the third season they kind of
changed it up a little bit and added some a
bit more of a bit more of equality into it.
So where you know, men actually had uh more quality
screen time. Uh, they didn't say women can't do anything.
They still had women still had screen time and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:38:45):
So while it was I would say it was decent,
it was a bit too little, too late at that point.

Speaker 4 (01:38:51):
And even with that being stanned, because the first two
seasons really didn't have any real good character development or
character story arcs despite having access to real quality from
what I understand, quality writing, and man, it's just sad
because they cancel the thing too. Third season in they
canceled it. So the silver lining here is that I

(01:39:13):
started the audiobook, I was like, you know what, I
could tell that there's some rich lower here and rich storytelling,
character development and lessons.

Speaker 3 (01:39:24):
So I started listening to the audiobook.

Speaker 4 (01:39:27):
I probably will even buy the you know, paper or
hardbacks or something, because I mean, while I can do
the audiobooks, something about just I don't know, reading the
books like in printed form for me is probably gonna
do more.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
I'm a slow reader.

Speaker 4 (01:39:44):
But and I will reread stuff that I just you know,
doesn't quite digest the first time I read a page.

Speaker 3 (01:39:49):
I might go back and read it again.

Speaker 4 (01:39:51):
Everything that I've heard from different sources has indicated that
it is definitely going to be worth my time to
actually go through this story. Even if I can't get
it on a video platform. If I have to read
it or listen to it, then that's what it takes.

Speaker 6 (01:40:08):
Gotcha. Well, I'd love to hear your opinion on the
real story when you get through all that. So cool?
How about you, Tim? What do you what are you
watch and what's new? What's interesting?

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
I had a lot of time to watch anything recently,
at least movie wise for sure. Been catching a couple
of random episodes of Psych, just you know, in the
evening hours to kind of wind down from work. So
just kind of doing doing the tour of the best
of Psych right now, and that that's about it. Hopefully
I'll have more time next week to watch a couple

(01:40:38):
movies and have something better to bring to the table.

Speaker 6 (01:40:41):
Gotcha. Well, like you, I've been a little busy.

Speaker 5 (01:40:43):
I haven't had much chance to watch anything recently, but
I do want to point out something I started watching
a couple of weeks back. I haven't mentioned it much
lately because I was wanting to finish it off first.
But on Netflix there's a TV It's an anime, or
at least a kind of anime.

Speaker 6 (01:41:02):
It's mech Cadets, and it's.

Speaker 5 (01:41:05):
A combination of like Voltron and kaijuws from outer space
kind of blinding together with like these alien robots that
come from out of space to help battle the Kaiju.
And there's this group of kids that wind up bonding
with these robots, and there's a whole military force that's

(01:41:28):
out there to support the robots, and they're called the
Mecha Cadets, the main heroes. And it's actually based off
of a comic book I heard about several years ago
that I've been wanting.

Speaker 3 (01:41:38):
To check out.

Speaker 5 (01:41:39):
So I figured i'd watched the watch the show first,
and I was watching it with both my kids, and
my son.

Speaker 6 (01:41:45):
Really really loves it.

Speaker 5 (01:41:47):
My daughter, yeah, not so much. She was more looking
at her phone we were watching it. But it's a
really fun story. It centers around a character named You,
and he's actually a janitor that wants to become a
met Cadet. And just yesterday I was at my local
comic shop and I came across the book that inspired
the series, called mech Cadet You.

Speaker 6 (01:42:10):
So I'll be reading that after I finished the series.

Speaker 5 (01:42:13):
Oh but yeah, if you like Voltron, you like futuristic
space kaiju fighting, you know, goony type characters that are
all in the military, then.

Speaker 6 (01:42:25):
Check out met Cadets on Netflix.

Speaker 3 (01:42:28):
Sounds good, man, I might check that out, all.

Speaker 6 (01:42:30):
Right, Tim, well you want to take us home?

Speaker 2 (01:42:33):
All right? Thanks for listening to the Middle Aged Movies
podcast and our review of Platoon. And if you've enjoyed
the sending into madness as we've cried havoc and let's
slip the dogs of war, please like, subscribe and leave
us some love in the comments, follow us on Facebook,
X Blue Sky, and Instagram. Have a comment or suggestion,
and email the show at Manreview Podcast.

Speaker 6 (01:42:52):
At gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:42:54):
Thanks, stay cool and buy everyone.

Speaker 6 (01:42:57):
I gotta give a hand to you for, you know,
quoting some Shakespeare there.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
I just came up with it at the last second.
I'm literally just typing that why Rick was talking about
what he was watching. I was like, thank god, Rick's
got a lot to say tonight. I'm like, Okay, what
am I going to put here?

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Episode 72 - Platoon (It's like Helms Deep)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 72 - Platoon (It's like Helms Deep)