Exaggerated fictional account of an American military leader gone insane.

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2016)

Even I find it a bit remarkable that just this week I got around to seeing this movie. I was rummaging through the movies on the shelf at my local public library and found this one on Blu Ray. Of course the picture and sound are both remarkably good, and includes very deep bass in key scenes where it is appropriate.
Two versions of this movie are on the disc, the original 2+ hour version with neither opening nor closing credits. Also the "redux" version released a few years ago, it is 3+ hours long. While the basic story is the same in each, the longer version includes a couple of scenes cut from the original. Neither of them affect the main story.
The main story is about a rogue military leader in the late 1960s, in a good performance Marlon Brando is Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. He has ended up somewhere in Cambodia and off the radar. He is accused of killings that may or may not be justified in the context of the Vietnam war.
In an equally good performance is Martin Sheen as expert assassin Captain Benjamin L. Willard. he is called in specifically to do a covert mission, if caught he was never sent, to find Kurtz and "terminate his command", which really meant to assassinate him.
To do this a small crew with a small boat are assigned to him, and they head out not knowing for sure when and where they would end up.
What makes this movie so striking are the makeup and cinematography which take the acting of Brando and Sheen up to another level. My only gripe with the movie is how they made so many of the military guys seem like frat boys using bad judgment and acting stupid. I am Vietnam war age, I knew several who went and served and to me it disrespects all the thousands who went and did not act like stupid frat boys.