Platoon Movie Details
Platoon taglines:The first casualty of war is innocence.
 Platoon DVD Cover |
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| Directors: Oliver Stone | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| IMDB Rating: 8.2/10 out of 101,301 votes |
“Platoon” 1986 by Oliver Stone – Movie Goofs
“Platoon” Plot Summary
A young recruit in Vietnam faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.
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“Platoon” Goofs List
- Anachronisms: Set in 1967, features Bunny listening to Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” not released until 1969.
- Factual errors: Taylor arrives in Vietnam wearing the unit insignia of the 25th Infantry Division. Low-ranking enlisted infantry replacements did not arrive in Vietnam with unit assignments, or insignia, but were assigned to line units as required.
- Factual errors: Radio voice-over refers to a “resupply helo” as a helicopter approaches. Only the Navy and Marines referred to helicopters as helos in Viet Nam. In the Army they were referred to as choppers, or more accurately in this case, a log bird (logistical resupply helicopter).
- Continuity: When the platoon finds the bunker complex, the Lieutenant sends Taylor and Washington out to guard the flank. Washington has a pack of Marlboros stuck in his helmet. Once he reaches his position, it is a pack of Kools in his helmet.
- Anachronisms: The “drug den” uses miniature Christmas lights. They only had 7-watt c-7 Christmas lights in 1968.
- Revealing mistakes: When the men are wrestling through the foliage in a rainstorm near the beginning, the rain sounds like it has an echo, as if it were inside a stage.
- Continuity: At the bunker complex, Sergeant Elias goes into the tunnels. In one shot he goes through some water, but in the following shots he is dry.
- Continuity: Crawford tells Chris and King that he “broke a hundred,” and is going home in April. That should have put the scene around January 1968. Chris, who we are told came to Nam in September ‘67 tells Campbell and King that he has only has 37 days in-country, which would make it November at the latest.
- Continuity: The position of the bandoliers worn by King in the goodbye scene with Chris just before the climactic battle.
- Anachronisms: During the patrol at the beginning of the movie, Staff Sergeant Barnes’s helmet band has two sewn-on reflective patches. These “cat’s eyes” were only adopted much later in the 1980s.
- Revealing mistakes: When the booby trapped device (box with Vietcong maps) in the bunker explodes, it rips off the arms of one of the soldiers. When he stumbles out of the bunker and dies, his hands are clearly visible hanging out under his T-shirt.
- Anachronisms: Staff Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias both carry Cold Steel brand knives, which were not manufactured until the 1980s.
- Continuity: After the last battle Chris has obvious injuries to the face and arms, skin burns etc. As he is stretchered out, his face and arms no longer have the blackened marks
- Anachronisms: In the last battle, as well as in the patrol in the very beginning, Captain Harris was seen wearing the nylon Y-shaped suspenders, which was not issued until the 1970s.
- Continuity: In the third battle (Ambushed by VC), the machine gunner (Morehouse) was hit spot on by an artillery shell from friendly fire and was shattered into pieces by the explosion. When the troops evacuated, his quite complete body, although charred, was the first one taken out.
- Continuity: During the last battle, Sergeant O’Neill hides behind a dead body. As he pulls the body over him, the body’s eyes are closed but when we see O’Neill peeking out, the eyes are open.
- Continuity: The position of Barnes’ dead body after the tank approaches.
- Crew or equipment visible: Exploding pack under Barnes’ T-shirt when Taylor shoots him.
- Anachronisms: When the soldiers are celebrating in the tent early in the film, they are drinking Budweiser from two-piece stay-tab cans with UPC symbols. Container companies introduced the two-piece can in 1974, the stay-tab in 1975 and the UPC symbol in 1978. Budweiser introduced the can style used in the movie in 1981.
- Anachronisms: The M-16 rifles used by the grunts in this film are closed flash suppressor models. Most M-16s in late 1967-early 1968 (the Tet Offensive that is portrayed at the climax of “Platoon” was launched by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong in Janury 1968) had a three-pronged flash-suppressor; this was replaced by a closed flash suppressor as the open prongs tended to get caught in vines. The closed flash suppressor model was introduced in 1967, but since the armed services require a soldier to keep the arm that is issued to them, the veterans likely would have the older model.
- Anachronisms: Staff Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias use the Colt Model 653 which was not available until 1973.
- Continuity: When leaving the burning village, SSG. Barnes’ left eye is black. When he and Sgt. Elias return to base camp and have a discussion with the Captain, Barnes’ right eye is black.
- Continuity: After the first firefight, the blood “M” the medic puts on Private Gardner’s forehead disappears.
- Continuity: When Bunny is in the tent talking to Junior, he opens his beer can with a “church key” (can opener). But when Lieutenant Wolfe walks in and Bunny bites a piece out of the can, it has a pop-top and shows no sign of having been opened with a “church key”.
- Continuity: The length on the soldier’s cigar when they are in the bunker looking at the Viet Cong maps, right before the booby trap blows.
- Revealing mistakes: As Chris is firing at the villagers feet in the hut, no fired shell casings are being ejected from the rifle although we hear it firing.
- Revealing mistakes: While the troop are in the VC village, interrogating the villagers, searching for weapons, etc; it is obvious that their rifle bayonets are rubber.
- Revealing mistakes: When the M60 machine gun is being fired the rounds on the ammo belt are clearly blanks; the ends of the cartridges are crimped and there are no bullets.
- Factual errors: In the attack on the camp, we see two NVA/VC soldiers acting as suicide bombers (one falls and explodes, the other makes it into the communication bunker before blowing up). In the script, these two men are identified as sappers. Sappers were specially trained combat engineers/reconnaissance commandos who used stealth to infiltrate a camp’s defenses and take out strategic targets before the main attack; they were never used as suicide bombers, as they were too valuable.
- Continuity: After the final battle Francis stabs himself in the right leg. He has a bandage on his left leg when seen on the evacuation helicopter.
- Factual errors: Captain Harris’ radio message to the Air Force refers to the NVA as ‘zips’. The derogatory ‘gook’ was used for the VC/NVA while ‘zips’ for South Vietnamese.
- Factual errors: The VC/NVA troops are often depicted wearing steel helmets; steel helmets were only worn by anti-aircraft troops protecting base camps in Cambodia and Laos. The VC/NVA ought to be wearing either floppy “boonie-hats” or the standard NVA sun helmet.
- Plot holes: Even if the body of Elias was recovered and it was discovered he had been shot with 5.56mm ammunition it still wouldn’t prove he was shot by an American soldier, as North Vietnamese soldiers often used captured American weapons in battle.
- Factual errors: At one point, a character is warned not to drink from a river because he might get malaria. While drinking the water could cause any number of diseases, malaria is not one of them, as it can only be transmitted by insect bite.
- Continuity: SPOILER: We see a view from the helicopter of Elias running as he gets shot by the Vietcong, and during this shot he raises his arms up, but when it goes to a close up shot of him, his arms are suddenly down and then raised up as he dies.
- Continuity: SPOILER: During the scene when Bunny beats the villager to death with his shotgun, Seargent O’Neill’s cigarette varies from long to short each time it cuts back to him.
- Boom mic visible: In right upper corner, when they are “emptying the shitter.”
- Boom mic visible: Visible above King’s head when he lights his cigarette.
- Continuity: Sgt. Barnes’ T-shirt when confronted by Chris at the end.
Download Platoon Related Movies
“Platoon” 1986 Trailer
‘Platoon – The first casualty of war is innocence.
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