This brilliant, bizarre, and confusing film originally brought producer-director Coppola great kudos. He was hailed as the creator of the greatest war (or antiwar) film ever made, yet subsequent viewings show considerable flaws and wide gaps in the story line that are merely filled in with
Brando's incomprehensibility. Sheen, a captain high on war and suffering from battle fatigue, is ordered to take a four-man crew up the Mekong River into Cambodia where he is to exterminate Brando, a berserk American colonel who has set up a ruthless dictatorship on an island. As the gunboat
proceeds upriver, Sheen and his men come under fire, which jangles the nerves of the exec...
Released:
1979
Rated:
R
Length:
139 mins