He's up

Rating: Null/10 (7 February 2000)

He's really up. Francis is up sh*t creek without a paddle, that is. This is just around the time one of Hollywood's greatest talents began vanishing up his own jacksy with a bloated and meretricious would-be adaption of a Conrad novel that doesn't make sense in translation. The sound of copter blades hiding the sad sound of an old hippy jerking off and all at sea. Or in this case the Jungle. He is of course brave and visionary to risk all in order to pursue his dream project and I couldn't do any better in a million years but still.....
When I was at school all the kids were drawing copters and writing "death from the skies" which tells you all you need to know about this comic book of a film. Full of self parodic quotable dialogue and pretentious arty flourishes we are subjected to silly scenes such as Martin Sheen emerging from the swamp to lightning flashes, the type that only seem to exist in films and then he runs around to not terribly dramatic effect to some old Doors song. It's meant to be deep or something. Rock and Roll war but filmic bore. All this wouldn't be so offensive if there actually wasn't an interesting story to be told behind all this. But we mustn't talk politics must we? Let's bung on some war paint and deal in abstracts about man the animal and taking orders from the jungle or some other tosh. Self pity pervades this expensive but risible project. Drop tons of bombs on an impoverished people, kill maybe a million and then they want us to say, "Ahhh, poor Vietnam vets." It is indeed tragic that so many men were drafted into this violent fiasco but lets get some perspective on the whole thing. The fact that the helicopters used in the making of this film in the Phillipines were called away by another dictator to bomb more poor people aptly illustrates the twisted priorities of film folk.
Another laughable aspect of this loathsome picture was the indulgence's afforded the method actors as shown in the documentary film shot while it was being made. That's it, let's just let Martin Sheen get plastered and watch him find his own personal heart of darkness. It'll be good for the film and yield a different angle to....to....no, on second thoughts it's piffle. And to get to the truth of what really happened in Vietnam let's sit around for two days with an overweight, allegedly fornicating recluse asking him questions like "why are you in Vietnam?" He'll have the answers. He's the greatest something or rather ever. Then we'll draft in John Milius wearing antlers to do whatever he does with his NRA gold card to macho heaven while surfing to the biggest bank that he can fit past the doorway into. The real horror was how much money was spent and how many praised this ghastly mess of a movie.