Platoon

Platoon grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drops you into the sludge of a foxhole near the Cambodian border in South Vietnam, 1967. The power - and the gory - of Oliver Stone's movie about the grunts of the 25th Infantry is that it treats its audience with the hard-hearted attitude of a platoon sergeant. Stone rubs your nose in the stench of carnage, bets you can't outflank the enemy, dares you to frag your platoon mate. Precisely because Stone forces you to experience a grunt's tunnel vision and rage, Platoon is a film of inspiring empathy and awesome force.

A company has gone to court to force the release of Platoon and Hoosiers prints so that the production of videocassettes can begin. Vestron Inc., seeking the movies' prints immediately, filed for the order Monday in California Superior Court for Los Angeles County against Hemdale Film Corp. and Hemdale Video Corp., contending that the companies violated Vestron's exclusive agreement for the rights to video release, a Vestron spokeswoman said. But Superior Court Judge Ricardo Torres said he did not believe that Vestron would suffer irrreparable harm by waiting until April 16 for a hearing on a preliminary injunction.

"Platoon," a drama starring Tom Berenger, William Dafoe and Charlie Sheen. Written and directed by Oliver Stone. Running time: 119 minutes. An Orion release. At area theaters. Well into "Platoon," one of the helicopters that fly through the movie like an incessant flock of buzzards takes off near the site of a just- finished battle. The wind it produces lifts a stretch of canvas off the ground, revealing several bloody, muddy and dead bodies. I imagine that Oliver Stone, the film's writer and director, sees "Platoon" as working much like that copter: as a cleansing wind that blows away the mythologizing, ideology and willful forgetfulness that have kept us from looking at Vietnam straight on, the way it was. "Platoon" is not the definitive Vietnam statement that Stone may have intended, or that others are already claiming it to be. But it is a powerful document about that sad war, and a riveting piece of moviemaking.

Auditor General Don Bailey's foray into the field of movie criticism this week may have ushered in a new sideline for state officials. Bailey lit into the film "Platoon" at a full-blown press conference Tuesday, giving it a no-star rating and not even recommending parental guidance for the way it depicts U.S. servicemen in Vietnam. And yesterday, state Rep. Allen Kukovich stuck his tongue in his cheek and announced that he might convene a press conference soon to blast the movie "Police Academy 4" for the way it depicts cops.

When you take the long-range view of the Phillies, reducing 24-year-old Ricky Jordan to a platoon player to give more at-bats to 34-year-old Dwayne Murphy might not seem like quite the thing to do. Long-range views, however, are for reporters and general managers. Managers have to think in more immediate terms, if they want to keep their jobs. "We're in a position where I have to start trying to win some games any way I can," Phils manager Nick Leyva said before last night's incredible 15-11 victory over the Pirates.

Four months ago, he might have been the Phillies' brightest young star. But times have changed. And now Ricky Jordan is about to become just a platoon player. Manager Nick Leyva said last night that he would begin platooning Jordan and John Kruk at first base when Kruk comes off the disabled list this weekend. In Kruk's absence, Jordan has had a three-week run as the everyday cleanup hitter. But although he has hit for average (.272), he hasn't given Leyva either the production (33 RBIs in 287 at-bats)

The Phillies are Rico Brogna's worst nightmare. Not because he lost his starting job after he returned from a lengthy stint on the disabled list last season. All has been forgiven as far as that incident is concerned. The nightmare for Brogna is that the Phillies have three lefthanded starters and he is stuck in a platoon situation with the Atlanta Braves. Because the Phillies started lefty Randy Wolf last night and will start lefty Omar Daal tonight, Brogna must wait until tomorrow before getting his first start against his former team.

The good news is that the video version of "Platoon" will eventually arrive in stores. The bad news is, we still don't know when. Here's the bottom line: Vestron Video, which originally had video rights to the Vietnam war epic, is attempting to win them back from HBO Video, which had snatched them away in a contract squabble. (And another hearing is set in Los Angeles.) Although Vestron appears to be making ground, even with a victory it could be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months before "Platoon" hits the shelves.

There will be no cheap Platoon - not at first, anyway. The rumors that HBO might price the home video of the Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie at $30 turned out to be way off base. The retail price of the cassette, scheduled for Oct. 14 release, will be a whopping $99.95, $10 more than current higher-priced cassettes. Collectors, who usually buy when the price has dropped to $30 or less, will have to wait at least until next summer to purchase this one, after Platoon has passed its rental peak.

Late last month, on the night the film "Platoon" opened in six American cities, groups of Vietnam veterans, some of them wearing combat fatigues, gathered outside the theaters where it was about to be shown. The grapevine had told them that this was the first film about Vietnam made by a Vietnam veteran - Oliver Stone, "Platoon's" director and screenwriter - and they wanted to be there. The scene has been repeated many times since then, in cities all around the country. "Every vet I know has seen the film, a lot of them more than once," said Dennis Fink, president of the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

DALLAS - The 2-year deal that the Phillies are close to striking with Laynce Nix, according to a baseball source, could be accompanied by two loud sighs of relief. The first would come from John Mayberry Jr., who at 28 will enter spring training with his first legitimate shot at an everyday job. The second would come from Domonic Brown, who just might find himself with another big-league opportunity by the end of the 2012 season. While both Mayberry and Brown would be impacted by the signing of a higher-caliber outfielder, Nix is not that player.

The prevailing thought at the start of Penn State's football season was that coach Joe Paterno would have a firm No. 1 quarterback in place by the start of the Big Ten schedule. Well, with the Nittany Lions' conference opener Saturday at Indiana, there is absolutely no indication that Paterno and his staff have settled on someone calling the signals full-time. However, in talking to both quarterbacks, Rob Bolden and Matt McGloin, after Saturday's 34-6 victory over Eastern Michigan at Beaver Stadium, you get the feeling the drama about who is No. 1 has diminished somewhat.

Francesco Quinn, 48, a television and film actor who appeared in Oliver Stone's searing 1986 Vietnam War film, Platoon, died Friday in Malibu, Calif. The son of actor Anthony Quinn, he collapsed on a street near his home. The cause was believed to be a heart attack. He was perhaps best known for his supporting role in Platoon as Rhah, a raspy-voiced character who takes heroin from dead Vietnamese and tries to help new recruits in their first big battle. In The Tonto Woman, a Western based on an Elmore Leonard story that became a 2008 Academy Award nominee for best live-action short, Mr. Quinn played a Mexican gunslinger.

Earlier in the week, Charlie Manuel said he was not even close to considering a platoon in left field between Raul Ibanez and John Mayberry Jr. When pressed Friday about Ibanez's lengthening slump and the player's age, Manuel scoffed. Then he started Mayberry against a lefthanded starting pitcher for the fourth time in the last five opportunities Saturday. "The more he hits, the more chances he'll get," Manuel said. "We'll go from there. " Mayberry did hit Saturday as he has done in limited opportunities all season.

Battle: Los Angeles is a standard-issue combat film with a twist: The enemy is a hater from another planet. Camouflaged as meteor showers, armored aliens invade Earth to suck dry its natural resources. Who you gonna call? The Marines, of course. The filmmakers strictly observe the movie law that just as he's mothballing his uniform, a short-timer gets redeployed. On the very day that he completes the paperwork for retirement, Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhardt)

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - The Phillies' best right-field alternative came off the board Sunday when the Washington Nationals gave Jayson Werth 127 million reasons to leave Philadelphia. The next-best alternative remains open for debate, which is, of course, the essence of these Hot Stove days and nights that fill the space between the last out of the World Series - or, in the Phillies' case, the last out of the NLCS - and the first popping mitt of spring training. Even if the Phillies choose to do nothing to replace Werth, they have options in right field.

On May 21, 1966, seven days after he turned 20, David C. Dolby acted with what his Medal of Honor citation described as "unsurpassed valor during four hours of intense combat" in the central highlands of Vietnam. On Sept. 28, 1967, in the East Room of the White House, President Lyndon B. Johnson draped the nation's highest award around Mr. Dolby's neck, saying that because of what he had done that day he was "one of America's bravest men. " But by the 1990s, Mr. Dolby was living on his Medal of Honor pension and military disability payments because of "mental, emotional" problems, said his brother, Daniel.

Reviews   . . Excellent   . Good . Fair Poor   Eat Pray Love See Steven Rea's review on Page 16. The Expendables See Steven Rea's review on Page 17. Get Low See Steven Rea's review on Page 5. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel See review on Page 5. Life During Wartime See Carrie Rickey's review on Page 4. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World See Carrie Rickey's review...

Who wants an $18 million platoon player? The Bleacher Bums in Wrigley Field have found their target for 2010, and have been entertaining themselves all week by booing Cubs leftfielder Alfonso Soriano. Not that Soriano is a random target. He dropped a key fly ball in Cincinnati on Sunday and misplayed another two against Milwaukee on Wednesday, then was booed off the field during a double switch. None of this would matter a whole lot except for two things: Soriano is under contract for five more seasons at a stupendous $90 million; and his once deadly offensive production appears to have evaporated at age 34. Soriano was not in the starting lineup against Milwaukee on Thursday, as he was hitting a brisk .214 with a single RBI. The slugger was a one-man team for the hideous Washington Nationals in 2006, ripping 46 homers with 119 runs, 95 RBIs, and 41 stolen bases to boot.

It's unlikely other American soldiers in Iraq have taken a route even remotely similar to that of former Flyers farmhand Ben Stafford. In about two years, Stafford, a 21st-century Renaissance man who graduated from Yale with a history degree, went from pro hockey player to medical school student to Marine. He also found time to marry his wife, Ali, during that span. Stafford, a forward who scored the winning goal when the AHL's Phantoms captured the Calder Cup in 2005, was deployed to Iraq on Oct. 5 and is an infantry platoon commander as a second lieutenant.