Shout Select has released a Collector’s Edition 4K UHD – Blu Ray combo pack of Oliver Stone’s 1986 Oscar winner, Platoon.

Considered to be the best film about the Vietnam War by most and the best war movie of all-time by some, Platoon was at the time of its release the latest in a smattering of antiwar films that began with King Vidor’s The Big Parade in 1925.

Historically, no antiwar films are made during wartime. The Big Parade was not made until seven years after the end of World War I. It was so popular that that the silent film was in theatres until the release of the first Oscar-winning antiwar film, Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, five years later. Also released in 1930 were two other major antiwar films, James Whale’s Journey’s End and Howard Hawks’ The Dawn Patrol. G.W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918, made that same year, was not released in the U.S. until late 1931.

Significant antiwar films made from the late 1930s through the World War II years were few and far between but did include Jean Renoir’s 1937 classic, Grand Illusion, and Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 comic masterpiece, The Great Dictator.

The late 1940s and early 1950s tread softly on the subject, carefully not attacking anything about World War II, which unlike World War I was seen as a righteous war. Antiwar movies of the era carefully avoided criticizing the war but attacking war in general in such diverse films as John Ford’s Fort Apache and Joseph Losey’s The Boy with Green Hair, both released in 1948, and Robert Wise’s sci-fi masterpiece, The Day the Earth Stood Still, released in 1951.

The late 1950s gave us David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, both in 1957, and Stanley Kramer’s end-of-the-world 1959 classic, On the Beach. The subject was explored again in three 1964 films, Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe, and the first significant antiwar film about World War II, Arthur Hiller’s The Americanization of Emily.

1969 gave us Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War, a steeped-in-irony musical take on World War I, while 1970 gave us Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, the first antiwar film about the Korean War almost twenty years after it occurred.

The only film about the Vietnam War made during the undeclared war was John Wayne’s 1968 atrocity, The Green Berets, which unrealistically portrayed the events of the war as though it were being fought as a conventional war, not the hot mess that it was.

1978, five years after the Vietnam war ended, saw the release of three acclaimed antiwar films that realistically portrayed the war, Ted Post’s Go Tell the Spartans, Hal Ashby’s Coming Home, and Michael Cimino’s Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter. 1979 gave us Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 epic, Apocalypse Now, and Milos Forman’s restructured film version of the antiwar stage musical, Hair.

Stone, who had tried to make Platoon for ten years, finally got the money to make it in 1986.

Based on Stone’s own service as foot soldier in the war from 1967-1968, his experience served as the basis for the film with Charlie Sheen playing the character patterned after the director.

1968 marked a turning point in the war. The January Tet Offensive, in which the North Vietnamese army took the American army by surprise, in reality had the North Vietnamese on the run but was portrayed in the press as a major loss for the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara resigned in February. Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated. President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Protests against the war mounted, but it would take five years for it to end.

Although none of these historical events are covered by the film, they did play heavily on the minds of the foot soldiers who are portrayed in the film as siding with either the gung-ho sergeant played by Tom Berenger or the thoughtful kindly sergeant played by Willem Dafoe, both of whom play a part in shaping Sheen’s character.

The fog of war in which soldiers can’t see much of what is going on, don’t know if it is friend or foe who is approaching, or who will be next to go home in a body bag, has never been more vividly played out on screen. The final battle depicted in the film, in which a U.S. Army major orders a strike on his own perimeter, thus killing himself, as well as many of his own men, albeit many more of the enemy, remains one of the most harrowing scenes ever captured on film.

The acting is first-rate throughout with both Berenger and Dafoe receiving Oscar nominations for their performances, and Berenger winning a Golden Globe for his. Others standing out in the strong cast include Sheen, Kevin Dillon, Keith David, Forest Whitaker, Francesco Quinn, John C. McGinley, Reggie Johnson, Mark Moses, Corey Glover, Johnny Depp, and Chris Pedersen.

Stone, who won an Oscar for his direction, would win a second for another antiwar war film about Vietnam, Born on the Fourth of July, released three years later.

Extras in the Shout Select release include an excellent play-by-play commentary from Stone and several making-of documentaries previously include in the film’s 2006 Blu-ray release.

Criterion has released a 4K UHD – Blu-ray combo pack of Darius Marder’s 2020 Oscar-winning Sound of Metal.

Nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, Actor (Riz Ahmed), Supporting Actor (Paul Raci), and Original Screenplay, co-written by the director, his brother Abraham, and original story writer Derek Cianfrance, it won for Best Sound and Film Editing.

If you haven’t seen it, you should, especially for Ahmed’s deeply moving portrayal of a suddenly deaf musician adjusting to his new life and Raci’s equally moving portrayal of his mentor.

Extras include a conversation between Marder and Cianfrance on the genesis of the film.

This week’s new releases include the 4K UHD releases of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Fright Night.