и все таки на данном издании есть ДТС!
А теперь более подробно
Video
Platoon comes presented in a polished-up 1.85:1 original aspect ratio anamorphically enhanced widescreen transfer. For a movie shot twenty years ago on a budget of a mere six million, it has been made to look surprisingly nice. Detail is generally good throughout, with only a little softness and negligible edge enhancement. There is some grain in some of the scenes but it is fairly acceptable. Colours are quite strong and deep, obviously restricted to the greens of the jungle with occasional explosive yellows and oranges of napalm. Blacks are fairly solid and overall this is an excellent transfer, marred marginally by a few minor print defects.
Audio
There are two main audio tracks: a Dolby Digital 5.1 effort and a DTS alternative. Both of them are largely frontally orientated efforts, with dialogue presented strongly and clearly, coherent throughout. Effects are fairly commonplace, but they don’t actually see much rear action even when the explosions kick off. The score really hits home, however, not least in that immensely memorable death sequence cut to Barber’s Adagio for Strings. It is a rousing track, but it appears to seldom find time to really show the full breadth and dynamism that is possible with any admirable six-speaker mix. We get a little bass thrown into the mix and at least they went to the effort of remixing it for this Ultimate Edition release.
Extras
First up we get not one but two full-length audio commentaries: one with the writer/director Oliver Stone and the second with the technical military advisor, Captain Dale Dye. Stone’s narration is quite a gem really, an honest and truthful account of what he actually went through that went into the story for this production. It is difficult to believe just how much he experienced himself (obviously he would have been in Private Chris Tucker’s position) and it makes the whole movie yet more poignant and captivating. The second commentary, funnily enough, also brings up some of the true experiences that the narrator—this time Captain Dye—went through during his tour of duty (including the final confrontation).
The second disc is where all of the documentaries are housed. First up, the ‘A Tour of the Inferno’ making-of documentary is fifty minutes’ long and revisits the production, with excerpts from Stone’s own student videos. He discusses how he volunteered for service to experience war, but came back with much more than he expected. There are a few too many clips from the final movie, but there is also lots of revealing footage from the actual filming, along with cast interviews (including Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger). They discuss the casting (with screen test clips), how the movie took a long time to come into production, boot camp, shooting in the Philippines and post-production.
The ‘One War, Many Stories’ featurette runs at nearly twenty-five minutes in length and has interview comments from Oliver Stone, along with several other Vietnam War Veterans, most of whom are present for a special screening of the movie—during which they give their opinions about the movie and offer up some recollections of their own war experiences. Some of the revealing tales are quite harrowing by their very nature
The ‘Preparing for the ‘Nam’ featurette is six minutes long and has Stone explaining how all of the main cast members had to go through eight weeks of basic training in order to prepare for the role. Most of them lost a great deal of weight and went through a fair amount of hell during this period and Stone talks about how he sent them straight on to do the filming after the training just so they could keep their edge. We get military advisers and trainers narrating footage of boot-camp and discussing—in detail—the hard routine that the novices had to undergo (it was actually the training that real raw recruits received before being thrown into the fray).
The stills gallery has a collection of shots from both the production and of the promotional art, totalling about two minutes of slide-show shots (four posters and about thirty behind the scenes shots, most of whom showcase a very young Oliver Stone). Finally we get three of the original TV spots, along with the theatrical trailer.
Overall
Platoon is an adrenaline-packed, harrowing tale of some of the most shocking and explosive battles fought within Stone’s experience of Vietnam. With resoundingly good performances from an excellent cast and some of the most memorable sequences in movie history (the Adagio for Strings scene in particular), it is about due for the ‘ultimate edition’ treatment and here it gets it. Decent video and excellent audio, along with some truly revealing extras (the Stone commentary is required listening), this release is highly recommended.
