War = Horror

Rating: 9/10 (28 August 2002)

This is film is truly incredible. The action is so real, it is like a live documentary. Coppola paints a horrific vision of the tragedy and madness of the Vietnam war. It is so interesting that it took 16 months to film, well over its expectancy and the fact that Coppola also had to use his own personal income to complete after it dramatically exceeded budgets.

It doesn't require any intellectual understanding, although the film is intellectually remarkable. The American soldiers in the Vietnam War jumped into the land of a fresh governmental country, aiming to protect themselves and in the end only received death and chaos for their troops and for the majority of the country they were fighting against. It was a war gone mad, like all other wars, without purpose or dignity. It was a pure act of humanity: to destroy and restore their own greedy needs. This is a film in which there is no saviour, where it is hardly possible to find hope in the gloomiest corners and where all surroundings are plagued with the infatuations of greed, anger, foolishness and egoism. As Coppola once said about the film: 'This film isn't about Vietnam. This film IS Vietnam'. He was right to the date. During the current situations of the world, where they are trying to protect their own skin, the world should try to analyse this film as much as possible and wonder about what it is trying to represent. It is a film which does not ask for applause or damnation. It asks for realism. A true masterpiece.