Platoon

                Serving in a war changes a person. It changes a person dramatically. It can totally change someone’s point of view, their whole outlook. This type of action and change is shown during the movie Platoon. People come in to serve with one view or belief, and leave with another.

 In this movie, Charlie Sheen’s character, Chris Taylor, comes to serve in Vietnam.  He comes from a rich family, and he had everything set out, he had it made. However, he dropped out of college, and decided to fight overseas, just to be a rebellious kid to his parents, and to prove them wrong. He did it to show them that he was capable of doing such things. He comes in, and doesn’t realize what he is getting into.

There are many conflicts going on during his deployment. Soldiers at camp often have disagreements. Their leaders are often disagreeing and feuding as well. It was almost like there are two sides on their camp. Sargent Elias is more of a happy and loving personality. He cared about the soldiers, and thus, the soldiers were fond of him.

The conflict in camp is mainly between Sargent Elias, and Sargent Barnes. Sargent Barnes was more of a “tough love” type of leader. He always wanted control of what went on. He didn’t care as much about all of the soldiers, he was much more of a selfish leader than Elias. These all caused the majority of camp to not like him near as much as they did Elias.

Elias and Barnes had a lot of conflicts, and they didn’t always get along well. Then, during battle, Elias was running back towards the American soldiers, and Barnes shot him. Not many people saw this, but Chris Taylor did. Taylor was shocked that anyone would do such a thing to their own fellow soldier, and it upset him a great deal. However, time went on, and people started to learn to live without Elias, no matter how much they liked it or not.

Then, another chaotic battle occurred. The Vietnamese ran invasions all over the American camp, they had them surrounded. The American soldiers had nowhere to go. They were scrambling, fighting for their lives, trying to survive. Many from both sides died, and Sargent Barnes was wounded badly. He called to Taylor “get me a medic, boy”. Taylor then pointed his gun at Barnes, and shot him dead right then and there.

War is a complicated and tough thing to go through. As Charlie Sheen’s character points out, “I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves.  The enemy was in us.” He is saying that not only are they fighting against the Vietnamese, they are fighting against themselves. It makes the war so much tougher when you are fighting both the enemy, and yourselves. Trying to deal with all the external conflicts would be hard enough, I would imagine. And not only did they deal with that, but they were working against themselves too. That’s why the war over there was so tough for them. It was almost like they couldn’t make any progress when they fought amongst themselves, and that was a common theme for that group.

13 Days

            Personally, I liked watching this movie. It gave me an inside look at what went on during those stressful and intense 13 days, it also showed just how close we really were to war with the Soviets. More than anything, this movie taught me that being the President of the United States would be so much more stressful than I had ever imagined.

            The movie 13 Days was about what went on during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and how the president and others in the White House went about handling the situation.

            The film started with the discovery of the missiles in Cuba by American spy planes with cameras on them. People were frantic, and they weren’t sure how to approach the situation at all. President Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Kenny O’Donnell are working non-stop, around the clock to try and figure out what approach they should take, and when they should carry out this approach. There was discussion of invasion, of airstrike, and of a blockade of Cuba. Officials had meetings discussing it, and they had debates arguing about it. They spent a lot of time trying to all come to an agreement on the matter. However, after a lot of time discussing, and thinking, President Kennedy finally came to the decision to carry out a blockade of Cuba.

            The blockade was then set and no ships carrying any sorts of offensive missiles were able to enter the country. The American ships would inspect the Russian ships, and if there were missiles found, they were sent back. There were a couple of close calls, in that miscommunication almost forced troops to fire weapons. Luckily, all of these confrontations were avoided in the end, and so was an all-out war with Russia.

            There are many conflicts stirring in this story, with the obvious, biggest conflict being between the two countries on the verge of going to war. Others include the conflicts in the White House. Do we invade? Do we declare war? Do we carry out an airstrike? Should we blockade? The list just goes on and on. Yet amongst all these, probably some of the biggest conflicts were internal. For instance, President Kennedy had so much going through his mind. He must have been torn apart by all of the tough decisions he had to make in such a short amount of time. But he remained calm, and didn’t show the people of America any sort of fear, or anger, or frustration. That, in my opinion, is very impressive.

            In my opinion, the movie 13 Days is a great film. It is very educational, and it taught me all about the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how it was handled. I honestly never would have guessed we were just that close to a World War III starting, but this movie proved me otherwise. And in my mind, that is what made it so good. It was entertaining, and it kept the viewers on the edge of their seats. I also thought the actors did a great job of portraying their characters. I really liked the fact that I got to see every single step of what was happening behind the scenes, and it gave me a close-up view of what went on.