Filled with more folly than most other directors' whole careers,
Coppola's Vietnam re-working of Joseph Conrad's Hearts of Darkness is
also populated by moments of brilliance. Captain Willard (a desperate
Sheen) is sent up river to assassinate rogue Colonel Kurtz (an unhinged
and muttering Brando). That's it really, but the fluid and
hallucinatory editing confuses and enlightens until a feeling of
transcendence is attained; the Eisensteinian juxtaposition is crude
but effective and the use of superimposition is a masterstroke. The
best and worst of cinema in one film, it can be argued that Coppola's
obsession with making this movie cost him any future genius.
