A true masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (15 August 2009)

When Francis Ford Coppola said 'Apocalypse Now isn't about Vietnam, it IS Vietnam' little did many realize how right he was. This isn't a war movie, it's a movie about madness, about insanity. The insanity of Col. Kurtz, the insanity of the war itself, and finally, and most revealing, is the real life insanity this movie caused the filmmakers and several of the actors in it. Beset by disasters, natural and otherwise, the production was over stretched, and way over budget, nearly killing it's leading man, and sending it's director to the poor house.
What remains is one of my favorite movies of all time. Sent on a secret mission to locate and terminate a rogue army officer, Capt. Ben Willard is astonished by what he reads in Colonel Walter Kurtz's dossier. Graduated top of his class West Point, highly decorated war veteran, degrees from Harvard, Army ranger school at 38 years old. Why does the Army want this man dead?
Escorted up the river to Kurtz's hideout by a Navy patrol boat with a crew of four men, Willard slowly learns more about the colonel's way of fighting a war. Based on Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', we see Willard go deep into his own dark heart, as he ascends up the river to the final showdown with Kurtz. A confrontation that is memorable to say the least. Morality, philosophy, terror, and madness are all at the heart of Apocalypse Now...