A psychedelic masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2009)

Bookended by firestorms, and featuring some of the most outlandish, unforgettable set-pieces in cinema at all points between - see the air cavalry attack to the strains of Wagner - Apocalypse Now is usually cited (with the usual dispensations for M.A.S.H. and Catch 22), as the film that most accurately portrays the utter insanity of war. Within this moral vacuum, to impose any kind of morality seems absurd, but that's the hypocrisy exposed here by Brando's doomed renegade Colonel Kurtz. Rarely has a Hollywood film worn its myriad literary and philosophical influences so heavily and proudly (it was penned by Nietzsche nut John Milius), while the story behind its making is as crazily compelling as the movie itself.