Was Barnes really a 'bad person'?

I think that Barnes is a lot like Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson's character) in the movie "A Few Good Men" (1992).

Like Jessup, Barnes has acquired the experience and skill to do his job competently, and has decided he's above the rules. He can do whatever he wants to get the job done. If he has to kill civilians or even his own men who get in his way, that's ok with him.

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You got your mind right, Luke?

Well, within the movie's context (active battlefield), he's more another war casualty himself.
- He's been there years already (worn down, physically and mentally)
- He's been wounded multiple times (several near death encounters MUST take a toll mentally)
- He was cracking up just before the village massacre (Charlie watching him mourning the booby trap victims)
- His sins really are going to extremes while carrying out his job:
a) His shooting of the woman was not only because she was mouthing off, but to terrify the head honcho, he even states he's going to waste more of them if he doesn't talk, so clearly it wasn't just him lashing out in frustration.
b) His shooting of Elias was in fact for challenging him in front of the suspected enemy and his troops, not out of fear of being court-martialled (the lieutenant being clearly on his side, there's effectively 0% chance of him doing time). Oliver Stone himself states Barnes' reason in the commentary when he fraggs Elias ("This is MY war"). He threatened to kill him at the brawl. He simply carried it out. Since on the battlefield Barnes has tactical command and thus authority over Elias, his fighting him there can be perceived (by Barnes) as insubordination. And insubordination in the battlefield is usually punished by death. That is how far gone (extreme) Barnes was at that point.

Stone also says in the commentary that in the final battle, where Barnes lashes out at Taylor and almost kills him (the airstrike saving Taylor), he's out of his mind (berserk) and thus most likely does not recognize Taylor. So you cannot hold that against him.

Even states that Taylor fragging him makes Taylor a murderer, and that will remain with him forever. he does not condone it as just (unlike a fragging of someone like say lieutenant Caley of the Mia Lay massacre, whom Stone states he would have happily fragged had the chance presented itself). Obviously he's not comparing Barnes to Caley.

Barnes was a hero and a villain.

Barnes was deranged, and was pleading Chris and the others to put him out of his misery when he gives his "I am reality" speech. He was suicidal.



~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.

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.

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."

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.

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