APOCALYPSE NOW

APOCALYPSE NOW
Francis Ford Coppola

This is one of my favorite war movies. It is very very difficult to keep an audience hooked to the screen with people constantly shooting at each other and bombing each other. This movie is so much more than that. This is what that makes it different from all the rest of the war movies. Using the Vietnam War as the setting, this movie manages to showcase the horror and drama of the Vietnam War without actually making it the main theme. The war is used as the backdrop not the main theme.

The gist of the movie is about a man’s dilemma and internal struggle when tasked to take down one of his own Colonel. As he journeys to where the General is, he constantly contemplates the act of killing, which he is tasked to perform, as a soldier while struggling to resolve his moral dilemma in committing pre-meditated murder. Throughout his journey, we see (as the backdrop) the horrors of the Vietnam War.

A lot of interesting questions were asked. In a war, at which point, one is seen as the hero in killing the enemy and one is seen to be committing murder? What if your countryman is now the enemy, in which you are tasked to kill, where is the heroism in this? Does the soldier follows orders to the T, even if it means killing your own countryman?

The main character sums up his dilemma succinctly in one of the movie’s most memorable quotes:

“Charging someone with murder in Vietnam was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500”