The horror

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2013)

Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious Vietnam War epic based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is my all-time favourite war movie. It can be a bewildering experience perhaps on first viewing, it isn't a perfect movie, less so in the Redux version, but at the end of the day, it is a masterpiece that shines through.
The opening sequence is an immediate attention-grabber, a series of hallucinatory images set to The Doors, and in itself, almost a brief short summary of the film itself, and a hint that we're not about to enter generic war film territory, but something else entirely.
From the start of his journey on a Navy PBR, we see the warzone almost entirely as Captain Willard - Martin Sheen - sees it. And we are treated to an increasingly bizarre series of images, scenes of a land where insanity prevails. A meet-up with the gun-ho Kilgore, a helicopter raid on a village with Ride of the Valkyries playing, a USO show, a base constantly trading fire with the enemy, and the trip into Cambodia, journeying ever further into 'the heart of darkness'. While many had misgivings about the Redux' additions, with another meeting with the Playboy Playmates, and the bizarre encounter with a French plantation, they do add to the sense of madness permeating the land.
Where the film often draws fire is the final act, when Willard meets Marlon Brando's character, Colonel Kurtz. It is true, this sequence is quite slow-going compared to the rest of the film, but it does stay true to the growing sense of senselessness, with Marlon providing the final touches with his rambling speeches, the film slipping further into cerebral territory.
Obviously, this is not a film to watch if you want just explosions and gunfire, though it does provide some of that. This is a magnificent achievement, and deserves all the acclaim bestowed upon it in the years since it's release.