Platoon (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.), Oliver...

Platoon (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.), Oliver Stone’s 1986 remembrance of the Vietnam War--a grunt-eye view--focuses on a near-symbolic battle between good and evil in the American forces done with passion, immediacy, realistic detail and explosive action. It’s a powerhouse of a film: a grenade-blast that cuts through to the heart. With Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger.

With some exhilarating downhill Rollerblading race footage, Airborne (KCOP Saturday at 6 p.m.) this really is hell on wheels. Unfortunately, it’s pretty close to hell off ‘em too, in a dull 1993 teen-out-of-water drama that kills time between stunt sequences.

One mysterious thing about Steel Dawn (KCOP Saturday at 8 p.m.) is its title. Are the makers of this post-apocalyptic “Road Warrior” rip-off predicting the dawn of a new Survivalist Age? A steelier one? Whatever the title’s significance, this 1987 release, starring Patrick Swayze, is atrocious.

Sweet Bird of Youth (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.), Richard Brooks’ 1962 adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play about an aging, florid movie queen and her kept man, is a good transcription, preserving the excellent Elia Kazan-directed stage performances of Paul Newman and Geraldine Page as Chance Wayne and Alexandra Del Lago. With Ed Begley, Shirley Knight, Rip Torn and Mildred Dunnock.

The Five Heartbeats (KTLA Saturday at 11 p.m.), director-writer-star Robert Townsend’s first fiction feature after his 1987 “Hollywood Shuffle,” is less a comedy than a funny-sad, warmhearted lament for the era of the classic ‘60s rhythm and blues groups. The 1991 movie soars in its musical sections, but its visual style is flat and its drama erratic; comedy specialists Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans take too many sentimental short cuts.