5. Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Complicated Plot: United States Army Captain Willard returns from a boozy stay in Saigon, where he's tasked by top military intelligence guys with a dangerous mission into Cambodia: following the Nung River into a remote jungle, Willard must assassinate a rouge Special Forces Colonel by the name of Kurtz, who has set himself up as a God amongst a local tribe - and must do so with "extreme prejudice." That means, like,
make surehe's freakin' dead. The movie follows Willard's arduous journey along the Nung River as he attempts to track down his elusive target, dodging death at every turn, albeit to a rockin' soundtrack.
The Incredibly Simple Solution: Why does Willard begin his mission so far from the area of supposed contact? I mean, I know the movie is made up entirely of his journey and that's the point, given that it's based on
Heart of Darkness, but from a logical perspective, why is Willard given a boat and a crew so far away from where everybody knows Kurtz is supposed to be? It doesn't make an inch of sense. The military intelligent officers at the beginning of the movie even specify the general area where Kurtz is rumoured to be lurking, so wouldn't it have made far more sense to take a helicopter and drop Willard
closer to that location? The fact that he's dropped several days outside of the target zone doesn't add up at, because know that there are U.S. soldiers in Cambodia - we see them there. Another boat could have been chosen for the trip, surely, which he could have reached by helicopter. Failing that, why didn't the army search for Kurtz by air? That way, they could've just napalmed the hell out of him when they found his camp from the sky - it's not exactly hard to spot, is it? Just look for all those heads on spikes, and a hallucinating Dennis Hopper.