Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 29

Book Reviews: A Murder Set in Philadelphia, Page 30People, Page 31 KIDFUN, Page 32Larry Fields, Page 34TODAY, Page 37 Quotable "Dorv'tlell me about X-rated producers. It's the G-rated producers who are sleazy, the ones with the real X-rated minds in this business." Russ Meyer, creator of "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravlxens" Philadelphia Daily News Tuesday December 30, 1986 Page 29 BLOOD TESTS PROPOSED IN AIDS STUDY By MARY FLANNERY Daily News Staff Writer nB he city health department's 1 1 epidemiologist says he plans to test the blood of homosexual men and former drug abusers as well as heterosexuals to measure the extent of the AIDS virus in the Philadelphia gay and straight population. The survey would measure not how many people have AIDS those numbers already are reported to the REPORT ON taXLD- LOS ANGELES i 8.75? KM '(' 7 j. rS--yry )m mm but the percentage of the tested population exposed Charlie Sheen," son of actor Martin Sheen, stars as Taylor, a soldier in Vietnam, in "Platoon MOVIE REVIEW 'PLATOON' FOCUSES ON THE FIGHTERS to the AIDS virus, said Dr. Robert G.

Sharrar, director of the division of disease control. A person who has been exposed and develops antibodies for the AIDS virus has a 20 to 30 percent of developing AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The proposal calls for blind testing of the blood, with the donors remaining anonymous. Permission to conduct the study must be given by the Health Department's Committee on Protection of Human Subjects and Health Commissioner Maurice C. Clifford.

Sharrar said he hopes that approval will come next month. "This is a useful public health tool," said Sharrar. "If we can get blood from different segments of the population, the results will tell us who is most at risk and where our education efforts should be directed. If we test Over time, in February and six months later, for example, we can measure an increase or decrease." Dr. Elizabeth Couturier, an epidemiologist contracted by the Philadelphia Health Management Corp.

(PHMC) to work on the project, is designing the study, which will measure the "seroprevalence" of the AIDS antibodies their prevalence in the tested population's blood. The AIDS virus, which destroys the body's immune system, is transmitted by the exchange of bodily fluids blood or semen. Gay men because of sex practices and intravenous drug abusers because of the sharing of needles have been identified as being at high risk of contracting AIDS. Blood in the survey would come See noser and Keith David as a soldier who makes irthrough the war alive by a combination of will and large quantities of drugs. The two dominant personalities, though the ones Taylor eventually will see as "fighting for his soul" are Sergeants Elias (Willem Dafoe) and Barnes (Tom Berenger).

Barnes, his face covered by a map of grotesque scars, was born to fight- in Vietnam. Taylor's voice-over narration compares him to Captain Ahab, and Barnes has a similar wound and determination, but what makes him so frightening is that he doesn't rage: He's a man who will do anything in war, even shoot a little girl in the head, and do it coldly. To Barnes, Elias is a crusader, a liberal "water-walker" concerned with nuance and useless notions of propriety, and has no business being in Vietnam. This opinion is reinforced when Elias raises objections to the liberties Barnes takes in the capture of the village. Elias wants to bring Barnes to military justice.

Barnes has his own ideas about justice, and they grimly play themselves out over the rest of the film. Berenger and Dafoe are outstand-See PLATOON Page 41 "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. By BEN YAGODA Daily News Movie Critic 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 state ment 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. Stone, the writer of "Midnight Express" and the writerdirector of "Salvador," has based the film on his own experiences. In 1967 and '68, he served in Vietnam for 15 months, being wounded twice, and it's this first-hand grit that distinguishes "Platoon" from "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now." Where those movies used the war as a metaphor (and weren't always clear on what it was a metaphor for), "Platoon" directs its gaze on men and battles and doesn't stray. Stone doesn't allow our gaze to stray, either. Most of the scenes are filmed in tight shots, and in the jungle, so you can't see more than a few dozen yards in any direction.

The structure of the movie is equally straightforward. In the first scene, Taylor (Charlie Sheen, whose father, Martin, starred in "Apocalypse arrives in Vietnam as a raw recruit. We then follow him through three set pieces: the taking of a village with My Lai-type abuses of civilians, an ambush of his platoon, and a full-scale confrontation with the enemy. The three episodes are pieces of superior moviemaking, with a sweep and emotional punch that's rare in films today. But what sets "Platoon" apart from, say, a first-rate John Wayne war picture is the human story.

Shortly after Taylor's arrival we begin to sort out the personalities of the "grunts" in his platoon, seeing how each has made or failed to make his peace with the horror around him. These are all well-conceived and acted roles, notably Chris Pedersen as a California surfer, John C. McGinley as a smarmy brown-,.