Madness always and everywhere

Rating: 8/10 (18 July 2009)

In this movie everybody is insane and not only Colonel Kurtz because any war is insane in itself and can only produce insanity. Values are so much degraded that we cannot distinguish between right and wrong anymore. It's the story of a captain who during the Vietnam war is sent on a special mission aimed at killing a former American colonel who went insane and left the army to go into the jungle in Cambodia where he formed a private army with local tribesmen and went on fighting the war on his own making lots of atrocities. Horror is more or less his motto and his obsession. Besides that he is also a poet and a philosopher and this feature of his discourse fits well in his behaviour. The movie develops itself by showing the course of the captain on his way to colonel Kurz's stronghold on a small Navy boat up a river through the jungle. During that course he and the crew of the boat find themselves involved in several happenings showing the true face of war, some violent and some delirious like for instance in the beginning the attack of helicopters against a Vietcong position by the sea, accompanied by Wagner's "The Valkyria" commanded by a crazy Cavalry colonel insisting of surfing on the sea while bombs explode everywhere around; another delirious scene is when the boat on its course arrives to an army post where there is a musical show for the soldiers performed by a few Playboy bunnies coming from USA who in the end have to seek sudden refuge in the helicopter that had brought them to avoid being molested if not raped. Another curious but full of meaning sequence is when the boat arrives to an old plantation owned by a French family who refuses to leave despite the war. The conversation at dinner between the family members and the captain is rather interesting to follow showing how differently French and Americans faced the war going on there. The movie is well directed and well performed by the whole cast and Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurz who appears only in the end is not better than the rest. Most sequences are really moving and touching and composed by impressive images. Perhaps the only flaw of the movie are the last scenes, a bit too theatrical in relation to its general atmosphere.