Ties with The Deer Hunter and Bullet in the Head for being the darkest war movie ever

Rating: 6/10 (3 July 2015)

Francis Ford Coppola's epic Vietnam story is a classic film by public definition, there's no doubt about it. Fully conveying the horrors of a useless war and the psychological effect upon the people fighting in it, this is powerful and challenging viewing. It's a beautifully shot movie and a highly influential one, helping to launch a whole Vietnam sub-genre at the time of which the Italians were extremely fond. Although if I hear that damned pretentious Coppola quote "this film isn't about Vietnam - it IS Vietnam" one more time I'm likely to scream!
The acting is very good and the actors (there are no women here) are frighteningly adept at playing insane men. Martin Sheen provides the focus piece of the movie and his deterioration into madness is so subtle that it's hard to realise that he has become deeply desensitised at the film's end until his final act of brutality. Marlon Brando is, well, Marlon Brando, thankfully on screen for only a short while as his babblings quickly become irritating (although I did like the bit about the snail on the straight razor) Cameos from Robert Duvall as a cowboy-type general and Dennis Hopper as a spaced-out photographer just add to the insanity of it all and a young Larry (now Laurence) Fishburne has the sympathetic role of a young soldier whose life is cut tragically short.
Aside from the realistic action sequences, this is mainly a jungle-trek film, shot on location to give it that extra real look. Fans of the Italian jungle genre would be wise to check this out, as at times this covers very similar ground. The powerful ending has Sheen and friends arriving at Kurtz's hideout to discover all manner of corpses hanging from trees and laying scattered around, with heads everywhere. Sheen's killing of the mad general is intercut with (real) footage of a bull being slaughtered in a native ritual - for me, this was sickening, and made the dying words of Brando - "the horrors, the horrors" seem all the more appropriate. An unforgettable film, and one that is both dark and very disturbing, although hardly an enjoyable watch.