Oscars: Every Best Picture Winner Ever Ranked From Worst To Best

26. Platoon (1986)

Oliver Stone's Vietnam War classic sees the filmmaker exploiting his own experiences in the war to resoundingly visceral effect, aided by a trio of magnificent performances from Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger.

Though Stone's filmography is infuriatingly inconsistent and he's constantly at battle with his own excesses, Platoon sees him channelling his energy in the right direction, offering a damning, character-driven masterpiece of a war movie with intensely evocative imagery to boot.

While it's unavoidably overshadowed by Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter in terms of classic movies about the conflict, Platoon opts for a more firmly-rooted, boots-on-the-ground experience, and it's also way shorter than either.