Thoughtful and Compelling

Rating: 9/10 (23 October 2000)

Director of Photography Vittorio Storaro and Production Designer Dean Tavoularis are the real stars of Francis Ford Coppola's epic rumination on the nature of battle. Tavoularis has fashioned a convincing replica of Vietnam with an eye towards the shifting landscapes both of the terrain and the American infiltration of it; and Storaro's deep focus tracking camera captures all the verdancy of the land and the orange explosions that come to describe the sky above. The remainder is also impressive: Coppola, along with co-scriptwriter John Milius, has written a thoughtful, compelling visualization of Joseph Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness" and the conclusions they reach (that adherence to innate rules of combat is more moral than the civility of organized war) make sense in the context of Vietnam. The visuals don't capture the heartbreak of assault as fully as one would like (Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" would surpass it on that level) but it remains compulsively watchable even as it grows increasingly moody and reserved. Recommended.