Whenever Huston is on screen, the movie seems to slip into a different rhythm. All her scenes play like seductions. They're gently disarming and sleepy, like lullabies. No one in the film suffers more from the creaky explicitness of the dialogue than Huston. She's a born movie siren.
Every entrance is like a blast of cool air.
It's like a pleasant Sunday drive with somebody who's hopelessly lost. The son of a retired master sergeant, Jackie is aquiver with faith in the military and enthusiasm for its mission in Vietnam. He's an idealist, a patriot, not a warmonger. Overall, Coppola's attitude is detached, almost lordly. He refuses to indulge in hindsight judgments about past events, and he lets his characters hold their convictions without undermining them.