A Flawed Masterpiece

Rating: 7/10 (12 November 2003)

At the height of the Vietnam conflict Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is withdrawn from combat duty to cross into Cambodia and assassinate Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade American colonel who is waging his own private war at the head of a local war tribe. In the course of his journey upriver, Willard witnesses the full horror and madness of modern warfare. He also encounters many ruthless characters including an officer called Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who launches a napalm bomb attack on a beach so that one of his men can go surfing. The film has always been considered a flawed masterpiece because its ending is rather confusing, in spite of a spectacular explosion that was the biggest ever staged for the screen.
My rating: 8/10