Was Barnes really a 'bad person'?
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sonofbeach-sheet — 10 years ago(June 09, 2015 07:01 PM)
To make matters worse, Barnes was brought up poor and uneducated in rural Tennessee according to the book. And if that was your background, being caring and compassionate usually applied only to the deeply religious.
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Druffmaul — 10 years ago(June 10, 2015 01:41 PM)
He was definitely wrong to summarily execute the woman in the village. Wartime did not give him the right to do that. Can you find some twisted way to defend what he did to Elias? He might have been a good man before the war, but wasn't a good man during the movie. He was rotten to the core. A mass of scar tissue with eyes.
I just read a couple other posts in here where people condone shooting the old woman in the village, saying that she was obviously VC, blah blah blah. The scene was obviously written to keep it ambiguous whether the villagers were actual VC, sympathizers, or being forced by the VC to comply. You have no proof and neither did Barnes. That kind of ***t actually went on in Viet Nam, and ***k you all for defending it. Anyone who defends it is scum. -
stevekaczynski — 9 years ago(June 05, 2016 01:47 AM)
I think the war made him like that. There was one scene where he was staring in front of himself looking extremely sad and tired and it reminded me of a poem about how exhausting the devil must find it to have to be evil all the time.
Philip Caputo, writing about his own Vietnam experience, talked about the absence of civilisational aids there, without which the number of virtuous people would decline by about ninety-five per cent.
"Chicken soup - with a beep straw." -
JayHysterio — 9 years ago(November 17, 2016 12:10 PM)
He was a bad dude. He shot Elias and caused his death and remember at the end he tried to kill Chris too. Executes a defenseless woman and was ready to execute a child? War crimes 100%. He couldn't even use the Nuremburg Defense because it was all his idea.
Actually in the entire film you only see one confirmed kill by Barnes. He shot the guy running away from the village and that was in the back. -
kidd-simon — 9 years ago(December 05, 2016 07:55 PM)
I agree 100%. Barnes was bad news and displayed classic characteristics of a psychopath imo. The way he killed the woman in the village and then disposed of Elias showed a total disregard for human life, he killed them without conscience.
Elias in particular had become a problem to him and when the opportunity presented itself to dispose of him he took it. Normal, rational people would never go as far as murdering someone like that regardless of what they had experienced. Elias was murdered in cold blood, plain and simple.
One of the most interesting scenes in the movie is the part where Chris sees Barnes looking sad and I think weeping after two guys get blown up, perhaps Barnes has seen too much death and is teetering on the brink. Maybe he knows he is not long for this world. I still maintain he was a bad egg to begin with though.
The part near the end where he appears to try and kill Chris is odd as on the commentary Oliver Stone said it was meant to show Barnes had gone crazy and didnt know what he was doing implying that he didnt recognize Chris as opposed to trying to kill him on purpose. Not sure I agree with that explanation.
Platoon is a great movie though.
It smells like a Spin Doctors concert in here. -
JayHysterio — 9 years ago(December 06, 2016 01:05 PM)
Well, Stone made the film so I guess his explanation must be accepted, however after the battle he wasn't crazy enough to not recognize Chris and demand a medic. Also he likely would've killed Chris in the hooch had Rah not intervened.
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fearless2003 — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 12:49 AM)
This is a stupid question. He killed a defenseless woman, and put a gun to the head of a child.
I don't give a crap if he's a soldier with a mission. Anyone who does that is evil and has zero sympathy from me.