The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hammered Down. Japanese proverb

Burned-out Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) gets selected for a special mission: go up the Nung River to Cambodia and assassinate Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). It seems the Army wants Col. Kurtz for murder. He terminated four South Vietnamese citizens, who he correctly thought were Vietcong secret agents. VC activity has come to a virtual standstill in his sector since the killings. Still, the powers-that-be are uncomfortable with a man that takes the bull by the horns… The sleazy, political general (G. D. Spradlin) explains to Willard that Kurtz has reached his breaking point - his methods are "unsound" - "he is insane." The greasy-looking CIA representative adds, "Terminate with extreme prejudice," as if that needed saying to an experienced contract-killer like Willard.

Willard begins his journey by boat with a navy crew (why not go by air?). To get into the Nung River he needs support from the Air Cavalry. Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) commands the gung-ho support group and meets them thirty miles from the mouth of the Nung. When Kilgore hears their destination, he balks because there is a VC village at the river's mouth. He changes his mind when one of the boat crewmen tells him of the great surfing available there. Kilgore leads a rousing attack on the village complete with Huey gunships blaring Wagner and spewing rockets and machinegun fire, topped off by jets lighting up the surrounding jungle with napalm. The protagonist's boat is airlifted into the Nung by helicopter…

Later, after many adventures including loss of two of the four navy crewmembers, Willard reaches the jungle lair of Col. Kurtz. The ending is in accord with the beginning of the film when Willard accepted the covert mission.

My feelings about this film, since I first saw it on the silver screen, is that it is full of bombastic set pieces and bravura photography and some of the best multi-layered sound I've ever experienced in a movie. Much of the soundtrack has the whir of rotor blades incorporated somewhere in the mix. The opening montage establishes the pattern where the rotors sound like a person on acid would hear them, blending into the eastern sounding guitar of The End by The Doors. The helicopters and jungle scenes are overlaid on burned-out Willard crashing in his Saigon hotel room, showing the fragments of his life. The film wraps up with a reprise of The End, which makes the soundtrack well-balanced and complete sounding.

The story lacks direction. It is thin, contains set pieces that derail the story, and is not well thought out or developed. The entire idea behind the story is to send Willard in to assassinate Kurtz. The excuse behind this given to Willard is that Kurtz is insane. If Screenwriter Coppola would have thought this through, he could have made it much more interesting by making Kurtz sane, but a maverick not subject to control from above. I think this was really the underlying idea in the back of Coppola's head, but he fluffed it in the execution (1) by making Kurtz a buffoon; and (2) making Kurtz's Montagnard tribesmen and American Special Forces troops all whacked out on drugs, thereby destroying any credibility that they were a force to be reckoned with. In the end, Kurtz is terminated - the nail that sticks up is hammered down - but it would have been much more interesting if he had been a worthier adversary.

Casting was also problematical, with Coppola pulling a major boner by using flabby, out-of-shape, and incoherent Marlon Brando as the supposedly rocklike Colonel Kurtz. According to the story, Kurtz went through Green Beret training at age 40, training that washes out lots of 20 year olds. No way was Brando believable in the role; neither did he look like somebody who could command anything. I can never understand the adulation Brando receives as an actor. Out of several times I have seen him, the only performance I remember him being memorable in was Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. Dennis Hopper played his whacked out, one-note acid head role that he has been relying on for 30 years since Easy Rider - another major casting mistake. Robert Duvall was easily the best player but he was used for only about 15 minutes of the l-o-n-g playing time. Martin Sheen was an adequate lead but has so little charisma it became labor to watch him for two-and-a-half hours. You can play spot the cameo and look for Harrison Ford, Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne, and Coppola, none of whom were more than adequate in their performances.

Final analysis: Great photography and sound. Poor directing, film editing, and casting. Every film buff should watch this film once to judge for himself whether it is worthy to be called a classic. I believe Apocalypse Now says more about the drug culture of which Coppola is so obviously a part than the Vietnam War. Better views of Vietnam are to be found in Siege of Firebase Gloria, Platoon, and Hamburger Hill.

More Vietnam War films you may wish to see include:

We Were Soldiers

Platoon

Full Metal Jacket

Go Tell The Spartans

The Green Berets

Hamburger Hill



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD