Updating Joseph Conrad's short story Heart Of Darkness to the Vietnam era was a clever move by the director Francis Ford Coppola, and he crafted an amazing war movie which has rarely been matched in both quality and excitement. Captain Willard is ordered to lead a mission into Cambodia to kill the renegade Captain Kurtz. After a very eventful ride up the Nung river, Willard and company locate Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) at a compound where a mad photographer tells them about how wonderful Kurtz is. There are severed heads and bodies strewn liberally through the compound. Kurtz captures Willard and denigrates him, calling him a messenger boy, but after a few days in captivity, Kurtz leaves Willard to roam the camp and talk to people. Kurtz likes to talk to Willard and he extrapolates on how efficient the Viet Cong are and also various deep topics like the ethics of war. Willard can see he is a true madman, he swiftly puts him out of his misery and exits the scene as fast as possible. All power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this is definitely true of Captain Kurtz. The film shows that we need rules and regulations in society lest the despotic madmen like Kurtz take control and establish an insane tyranny. Marlon Brando delivers a powerhouse performance as Kurtz, an elite soldier turned renegade, who expounds his crackpot theories and actively wants Willard to kill him and inform his wife and son of his deeds. Brando is simply the best madman ever to grace the screens in a war movie.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
