A great Vietnam War film, but not a total masterpiece...score: 8 (out of 10)

Rating: Null/10 (13 December 1998)

I am inclined to view "Platoon" (1986) as THE BEST film about the Vietnam War over this movie. The first half of this film is a masterpiece, however, as the movie proceeds we are caught up in the chaos of a tyrannical Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) and his living hell. Sure, war is hell, and that's the point of the movie. I can even see why Brando felt his performance should be filmed in the dark. When Robert Duvall's character, Colonel Kilgore, commands the village attack sequence, we are brought into the "reality" of the Vietnam conflict. But, somehow, the search for an insane colonel in the second half of the movie didn't agree with me. In other words, the flow of the movie was uneven, but it is still a great film.