what an amazing movie !

Rating: 8/10 (5 March 2015)

Apocalypse Now was made in 1979 by Francis Ford Coppola. This film takes place during the Vietnam war. Captain Willard is sent by his superiors to Cambodia for a secret mission that « does not exist ». During this undercover operation, Willard has to find and assassinate Colonel Kurtz , a highly decorated Green Beret who has gone insane during the war. Kurtz is now in the jungle in Cambodia where a local tribe worships him and obeys to his orders. Willard and his crew go up the river which will lead them to Kurtz in a US patrol boat. Along the way, they encounter several interesting characters such as Captain Kilgore who is more concerned with surfing the waves than with the death of the soldiers and the outcome of the war. This movie shows how Willard confronts the horrors of human brutality, hypocrisy and the violence of war that drove Kurtz into insanity. During the whole film, Willard details his thoughts and discovers the darkness of his own heart. Usually I am not a fan of war films. However I really liked this one, mostly because it is not only about men on a battlefield, gunshots and blood but it also focuses on the psychological consequences that war has on soldiers.
On top of that, I was surprised by the amount of aspects of war that are treated in this movie : the use of drugs in the US army, the mentality of destruction that Captain Kilgore embodies etc.
I won't forget Apocalypse Now because it delivers a reflexion about moral issues : there are not good and bad guys but men lost into the madness of war.