Oliver Stone's Platoon is actually about the conflict between two Sergeants in a typical Nam platoon. One is a bloody, axe-murdering evil bastard (Tom Berenger) named Barnes. The other is an opium-smoking, moral man (Willem Dafoe) who cares for each one of his subordinates, named Elias. Stuck in the middle is the clueless Platoon Lieutenant "Sergeant Barnes I would appreciate it if in front of the men I were to give the orders" Wolfe.

The conflict is initiated by Barnes' execution of a Vietnamese villager's wife as part of an ad hoc interrogation. Elias becomes furious, fisticuffs ensues, and the remainder of the film details the huge chasm separating the two factions in the squad: Barnes supporter, who mostly couldn't care about a few dead gooks, and Elias supporters who want to see Barnes court-martialed. The ideological differences between Barnes and Elias get somewhat blurred as the end approach, as they both end up wasting just as many people. Other point of note is that these two account for roughly 90% of the platoon's total kills.

Throw in a crew of working-class privates, a fish-out-of-the-water college grad (Charlie Sheen, narrator), gore which may have been considered realistic by 1986 standards but is somewhat stale in our post-Saving-Private-Ryan world, memorable dialogue such as

-Don't drink that asshole, you're gonna get malaria.
-Yeah, I wish!
and psychotic private Bunny's jaw-dropping bite into an aluminum beer can, you've got one of the best war movies of all time.