Young Guns (1988)

British gentleman John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) employs several youthful cowboys to tend his cattle on the New Mexican frontier. But after Lawrence G. Murphy (Jack Palance) murders Tunstall, those young guns seek revenge...

Directed by Christopher Cain, this is a competent western that doesn’t break any new ground and doesn’t really need to. It was presumably created to show off these popular, good-looking actors (including Kiefer Sutherland and Charlie Sheen) in a group format that justified an ensemble cast.

Emilio Estevez is convincingly unpredictable as William H. Bonney a.k.a. Billy the Kid, although he just made me yearn to re-watch  Sam Peckinpah's superior Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Wall Street (1987)

There’s something not quite right about Oliver Stone’s stock-market thriller. Michael Douglas is actually fairly compelling as the corrupt Gordon Gecko and his much-discussed “Greed is good” speech remains an iconic bit of cinema. But Charlie Sheen is woeful as the young upstart who initially wants to be Gecko and ultimately wants to ruin him. Can Charlie Sheen act? Seemingly charmless, humourless and lacking emotional range, he’s almost exactly the same here as he was in Platoon. He simply does not convince and it's unclear whether or not you are meant to be on his side.

Daryl Hannah is oddly underwritten as Sheen’s interior-designer girlfriend. James Spader isn’t given enough of a role, either. He would have been a better choice for the main part. But the script is slightly clichéd all round.

The best things about the film are Martin Sheen, the on-screen and real-life father of Charlie, and the New York skylines and scenery. Terence Stamp is OK, but – absurdly – he’s made to say “mate” and “bloke” to accentuate his Englishness.

There’s a good film in there somewhere, but Oliver Stone – as usual, intent on making a Big Statement – cannot tease it out.

Platoon (1986)

Oliver Stone’s first Vietnam war film seems trashy in places (the script could have been stronger), but it does a good job of storytelling. There are three main threads: the young soldier who loses his innocence (Charlie Sheen), two feuding sergeants (Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger), and a wider narrative about the US forces being out of their depth in a conflict that made no sense to them. It’s gory and harrowing at times. Watching it so soon after Apocalypse Now meant it was difficult not to compare them, and Platoon has none of that masterpiece’s poetry or visual flair. It’s rather surreal that the star of this film is the son of the star of that film, almost as if Platoon is the sequel.

If you believe Full Metal Jacket, all new soldiers had their heads shaved. Why, then, did Charlie Sheen have long, 1980s-style hair?

Despite its flaws, Platoon builds to a satisfying resolution, and as an anti-war film it very effectively shows you how desperate and horrible it was for these young men.