Search - Platoon / Windtalkers (Double Feature) on DVD

George K. from COLCHESTER, CT
Reviewed on 3/22/2021...

You'll not find a better pair of war movies.

Both have lots of battle violence and lots of blood and not much delight in the business of war.

Platoon is a dark and sad portrayal of front-line action in the Vietnam war. Charlie Sheen plays the narrator, a well-to-do college student who gets into war and is devastated by what happens around him. Sudden death and betrayal dominate the action. The movie ends with no surviving heroes, although the Sheen character lives to tell the tales.

Windtalkers centers on the Navajo World War Two communications specialists who speak a code that the Japanese cannot break. Adam Beach plays a Navajo who experiences racial prejudice, no matter his vital role. Nicholas Cage plays a hardened Marine who is assigned to protect the codetalker and (if he might be captured by the Japanese) execute him. Although this movie does have heroes, the prices they pay make their heroism less than tempting.

Roger Ebert, in his review of Platoon, said, "It was Francois Truffaut who said that it's not possible to make an anti-war movie, because all war movies, with their energy and sense of adventure, end up making combat look like fun."

If Truffaut had seen this pair of very moving films, he would have reconsidered.

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 4/24/2020...

5/5 Rating - Platoon - Many Academy Awards and best picture and director Oscars. A classic great Oliver Stone war movie!

Barbara . from LAS VEGAS, NV
Reviewed on 9/12/2009...

This two DVD boxset contains two war movies that focus on the untold stories of warfare.

Platoon follows a squad in Vietnam as they bond and face the harsh reality of war, two leaders clash, good vrs evil, and one is betrayed and killed in the most heartmoving scene ever in a war film.

Windtalkers is about Navajo translators and their untold story they played in WW2, creating unbreakable codes in their complex language to foil the Japanese, and one man's search for redemption from a terrible event that haunts him.