Francis Ford Coppola’s monumental Vietnam epic was his fourth great film of the 1970s. A stunningly real and poignant story about the madness and hallucinogenic qualities of war, it is remembered as one of the best films ever made. Martin Sheen plays Captain Willard, an American army officer charged with sailing up river into Cambodia to kill a rogue American Colonel. Along with an inexperienced and hapless crew, Willard ventures into unknown territory, experiencing increasingly dark, twisted and absurd situations. The film’s climax becomes almost unbearably murky and drawn out, as it does for Willard, before he finally manages to make a move. The screenplay by John Milius is superb; the story having been adapted from Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’ The cast are fantastic, especially Robert Duvall as the insane Colonel Kilgore and Marlon Brando as the mysteriously unhinged Colonel Kurtz. A famously troubled shoot, credit has to go to Coppola for reigning in the madness and constructing an outstanding work of art; essential. 9/10
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