Well, Pulp Fiction, I hope you've enjoyed your stay at the top of my modified AFI list. It was a good run.
Plot summary (with spoilers): Capt Benjamin L. Willard, special operations, sits holed-up in a shitty hotel room in Saigon, haunted by demons. He smashes a mirror, does drugs, rages and weeps intermittently.
He's paid a visit by several military higher-ups, including Harrison Ford, who have an assignment for him. He's to track down a Col. Walter E. Kurtz, of the US Army Special Forces, and exterminate his "command" with extreme prejudice. Kurtz has gone rogue, disobeying orders, forming his own army of followers and committing multiple acts of murder. Willard is intrigued. Charging a solider with murder in this war is like charging an Indy 500 driver with speeding. Something doesn't add up. But he takes the assignment, anyway. He has no choice.
He's put on a boat, which will take him to Kurtz's last known location, in Cambodia.
With him is the boat Commander, Chief Phillips, a crewman nicknamed "Chef", a young kid named Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller (14 year old Laurence Fishburn who lied about his age to get the job), and a famous surfer-turned draftee named Lance Johnson.
They first need to be escorted to the beach that accesses the Nung River, which will take them to Cambodia. They meet up with Lt. Col Bill Kilgore, who recognizes Lance and takes a shine to him, due to their shared love of surfing. Kilgore says he and his men, all helicopter attack pilots, need to take over a patch of land on the beach first before they can take Willard and his crew to their destination.
What follows is the first of many many mind-blowing spectacles, a true marvel in technique and beauty and horror, as Kilgore and his fellow helicopter pilots fly into the Viet Cong-occupied village at low height and begin bombing the shit out of it, while blasting the Ride of the Valkyres at full volume. VC men women and children run for their lives as the copters circle around and around, the men firing machine guns and dropping grenades. Some choppers land and the firefight continues on the ground, with the Americans taking some losses as well, including a women throwing a grenade into a chopper when they're trying to load up wounded.
Kilgore calls the VC "savages", then asks Lance what he thinks.
"Well, it's pretty exciting sir--"
"No no, about the surfing conditions. Good waves, right?"
They land, and as the firefight continues around them and an occasional mine explodes in the background, Kilgore orders several of his men to start surfing, then tells Lance to do the same. Willard says that due respect sir, maybe it's not safe to do that, but Kilgore insists he's not chickenshit and strips his shirt off, swearing he's going to go surf, too. The Americans drop napalm, the smell of which Kilgore loves in the morning, and probably anytime. (The line reading here is just fantastic. I've heard the line before, but I don't think I ever saw Robert Duvall actually say it, and it's not an evil or ruthless delivery, as I'd expected, but a romantic one. He's...wistful. Wistful about napalm).
After the battle, Willard pours through his dossier about Kurtz. If Kilgore is considered an acceptable leader, then how far around the bend must Kurtz be?
That night, the men enjoy a USO show complete with Playboy bunnies, who dance around in skimpy outfits until they're mobbed by soldiers and have to escape in a helicopter.
The next day, Willard and his men are granted safe passage to the Nung River, and begin their mission proper. Only Willard's privy to the details of the actual mission. After a time, the men begin to forge relationships. The boat captain Chief is suspicious of Willard's motives, but keeps his objections to himself. Chef and Mr. Clean fight a lot, while Lance gets more and more withdrawn. He becomes obsessed with applying camouflage makeup to his face in intricate detail. The come across another boat with an older civilian Vietnamese couple in it. Chief wants to inspect the boat, and does so over Willard's objections.
Chef boards the boat over the couple's foreign-sounding protests, and begins to inspect it. He reaches down to take the lid of a yellow basket and the woman runs forward, screaming. Mr. Clean opens fire with his machine, gun, shooting them both, then just sort of firing a bunch of times afterwards. He finally stops. Chef opens the basket and incredibly pulls out a small puppy, like maybe a golden retriever or something. Lance grabs it from him violently and holds the puppy and begins petting it, creepily whispering in its ear. They notice the Vietnamese woman is still alive, and Chief orders that she be brought onboard the boat and taken to a nearby encampment for medical care. As Chef and Mr. Clean scoop her up, Willard calmly says they don't have time for this, then pulls out his gun and shoots her dead.
"I told you not to stop."
Day turns into night as they sail onward. They encounter what looks like the remains of a fierce battle that took place a half a day or so ago. There's a half destroyed bridge over the river, downed helicopters on both sides, dirty, angry soldiers stranded and lost. The beg Willard and his crew to take them to safety. Occasionally, gunfire can be heard or a flare goes off. Incredibly, what comes to my mind is that it looks like if the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland became real as you were riding your boat through it, and you had to get out and start walking among the pirates. Then Lance reveals to Chef that he just took a hit of acid. Because things are not fucking crazy enough for ol' Lance right now. Willard says he needs to speak with the commanding officer in the area. He takes Lance along with him (who brings the puppy in his coat) and they get off the boat. They encounter a couple soldiers in a foxhole. One is firing repeatedly at what he says is a VC somewhere off in the dark, taunting him. Willard wants to know who's in command. No one has an answer. He eventually leaves.
They all get back on the boat, and some time later, are ambushed by some natives on land. Mr. Clean is shot and killed. Chef starts weeping. Chief blames Willard and this fucked up secret mission. Lance realizes he's lost the puppy and starts going nuts looking for it. They continue onward, and some other natives start shooting arrows at them. Chef opens fire with his machine gun, until Willard realizes they're toy arrows and tells him to stop shooting. Chief's had it, though, and declares the mission over. He's turning around. Suddenly, a spear goes sailing through his upper chest. He collapses into Willard's arms. Willard lowers him gently to the deck, and with his last breath, Chief struggles in vain to pull Willard onto the spear sticking through his chest.
Afterwards, Lance, in full camo makeup and wearing the toy arrows through his head like Steve Martin, gently kisses Chief on the forehead and lowers him into the water, waving goodbye. Willard tells Chef the real purpose of his mission, and says they need to make it to Cambodia no matter what. They sail on, until they reach a large group of boats in the water, blocking the entire river. On the boats are dozens of Cambodian, American, and Vietnamese men and women, all painted white. As Willard, Chef, and Lance approach, the boats part to give them an opening. Willard stares in mute apprehension as they round a corner and see literally hundreds of white-painted cult members, staring at them from the banks of the river, all carrying guns or spears. There are dead bodies everywhere. Decapitated heads, naked bodies hanging from trees, everyone covered in white paint and dirt and shit and blood. It's fucking terrifying. From the bank, an American calls out to them. He welcomes them vociferously, as they others continue to stare. The American says he's a journalist, a photographer, but now he's a member of Kurtz's Army. And these people here are all his soldiers.
Oh shit.
The photographer says he'll take them to see Kurtz. Willard instructs Chef to remain on the boat. He tells him that if things go bad, to radio headquarters with this location and order an airstrike, obliterating everyone and everything. Willard and Lance walk onto the land and the natives continue to stare in silence as the photographer chats a mile a minute, going on and on about how great Kurtz is. Soon, the cultist goons have surrounded Willard, and they pile on top of him, carrying him upside-down, stripping him and dunking him in the mud. They leave him in a bamboo cage while the photographer gives him water and a cigarette. He tells him Kurtz knows his mission is to kill him. But good news, Kurtz has allowed him to live, for now.
Finally, Willard is brought in to see Kurtz.
In a fantastic moment, Kurtz, mostly concealed in the dark, talks pure fucking insanity about I don't know what and basically invites Willard to join his crew of fucking crazy weirdos. It's like staring into a black hole. Willard's taken away and tied up to a post in the mud and rain. A bit later, Kurtz approaches him and casually drops Chef's head in his lap. Willard screams, weeps, thrashes about and manages knock the head away.
At this point, Lance is seen casually hanging out with the others, fully emerged and integrated.
Some time has passed. Kurtz speaks to Willard again, tells him about what happened. What happened to make him leave the old world behind. He and his men were instructed to inoculate a group of Vietnamese children, but afterwards the VC showed up and chopped off all the children's arms where they had been given the vaccine. Kurtz saw the pile of children's arms and snapped.
Willard is free to go, and seems to be integrated into the cult as well. We see him emerge from the river, naked from the waist up and covered in mud and paint. He approaches Kurtz with a machete. A brief battle ensues, and Kurtz is slain.
The horror...the horror.
Willard leaves the temple and the cultists all lower their spears and bow down to him. Willard slowly walks through them, towards the river. He sees Lance, and takes him gently by the hand and guides him over to their boat. They get on, and sail slowly away, as Army command squawks on the radio, demanding to know Willard's status. Willard shuts the radio off.
He and Lance ride off into the night, but the horrors continue.
Review: This is really something amazing. Looking back, I think I've wasted so many superlatives on other movies, that any words I use to describe this one will seem inadequate. The sheer majesty of this undertaking is what's most enthralling. (Pretty sure I haven't used "majesty" before). The work that went into this production is mind-blowing. We're truly a long way off from CGI ever equaling the gutteral, instinctual reaction you naturally have when watching something "real". The movie would truly be less engaging if the explosions and mass carnage were all glorified cartoons. In fact, the "Redux" version that came out in 2001 has scenes that they didn't have the budget to do properly in the seventies and have been "enhanced" by CGI, which makes me a little reluctant to see it. Kurtz shot first?
Martin Sheen's performance is excellent, and it's almost unreal how much he looks like Emilo Estevez. I'm a little sad he never truly became an A-list actor, though at least he'll always be remembered for this and President Bartlett.
It's funny how the movie is almost a super macbre version of The Wirard of Oz, with Willard and his rag-tag crew as stand-ins for Dorothy and her friends, and Kurtz as the Wizard. Kurtz is the same function as the Wizard, too, he represents Willard's last hope for salvation and escape. And he's just a bunch of smoke and mirrors, ultimately.
Which brings us to Brando. I fully concede he's a fucking weirdo, and I'm aware even without yet seeing Hearts of Darkness that he was incredibly difficult to work with and that the fact that he was grossly overweight impaired his ability to play the part originally as written. The final battle scene between him and Willard was basically cut down to nothing because Brando was too fat to fight.
BUT...much in the same way that problems with the mechanical shark in Jaws led to Spielberg's clever directorial tricks to keep the shark mostly out of sight, the fact that Kurtz is seen mostly in darkness and in close-up really added to his mystique. I didn't care much for Brando in Streetcar, but here the fact that Kurtz is crazy and sick and a giant enigma fits in with Brando's larger than life personality perfectly. I think it was perfect casting. The part I liked about Brando in Streetcar wasn't his line delivery, but his..."essence", or gravitas, if you want to be a pretentious douche about it, is undeniable. And here it works so well because Kurtz is all gravitas. Contrast his extremely over-the-top stuff with Sheen's subtle, nuanced work and you have cinematic gold.
Finally, there was originally a different ending where Willard and Lance sailed away and then there was a overlap scene of Kurtz's camp getting blown up. Apparently, people quite reasonably took that to mean Willard ordered an airstrike of the camp, which was not the interpretation Coppola wanted to give. To him, it was just a scene like the crashed plane at the end of Lost, which was completely separate from the movie. So he pulled that ending and replaced it with the fade to black, which I think was the right call to end things with a sliver of hope for humanity.
Anyway, this was great. Can't wait to see Hearts of Darkness.
Stars: Five out of five.
Next, "Double Indemnity", and then things get gay again with "All About Eve".
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