Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #505 in VHS
• Released on: 1997-10-06
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Customer Reviews

An underrated movie.
Platoon Leader is not what I expected from Cannon Pictures, masters of the career ending, guilty pleasure b-grade formula film. It is less a formula war movie than the story of how an idealistic and by the book lieutenant (Michael Dudikoff) becomes a leader of men after getting a severe dose of reality training in the (...) quagmire of the Vietnam War. What makes this really refreshing is how favorably the lead characters are presented as Lyons's old timer encourages Dudikoff's character to strengthen and maintain a firm grip on the beliefs that who they are, what they stand for, and why they are there are right and just. Hope and idealism winning out in what one would think would be yet another in the then endless parade of Vietnam War angst movies. Recommended.

Were you in Vietnam? No DVD yet?
Some noncomplimentary reviews have been written here by people who, from what I conclude after reading their comments, did not actually serve in Vietnam. I did serve with the USMC around the DaNang area in 1969-70. After seeing most of the Vietnam war movies, I feel that this movie is the most realistic of how it really was over there. Why is there still no DVD of this movie?

The Vietnam war as it really was.
If you want to see the Vietnam War as it was experienced by a real Platoon Leader, this is it. Authentic, down to the mannerisms, slang, terror and disillusion of it all, this film has none of the wierd phantasms of Apocalypse Now or the left wing political hype of Oliver Stone's Platoon. Richard C. Caporiccio, LTC, Platoon Leader during the Vietnam War