APOCALYPSE NOW

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Vietnam

Opening scenes (hotel)

Apocalypse Now opens in Saigon in 1968. The army captain and special

intelligence agent Benjamin Willard is in a hotel room, drank and

desperate to get back into action.

He was back from war and went home sad and sick of civilization.

He divorced, and returned to Vietnam for a second tour, waiting for a new

mission.

At the headquarter to learn about the mission

Two officers arrive to escort Willard to Nha Trang, where he meets with two

military superiors and a CIA operative, who informs him about a dishonest

colonel named Walter E. Kurtz.

They ask Willard find and “terminate” Kurtz, who has become crazy and

committed murder with the help of a native Montagnard army.

Kurtz is now at an outpost in Cambodia with the Montagnards, who treat him as

a god.

Sailing the river and bomber strike

• To reach Kurtz, Willard joins the crew of a Navy river patrol boat (abbreviated PBR, as in Patrol Boat River), to get to the Nung River to Cambodia.

• The boat’s crew consists of four men: Chief, Chef, Lance, and Clean. With Willard on board, the crew meets the Ninth Air Cavalry, who have to escort the PBR to the mouth of the river.

• The crew members find themselves in the middle of a B–52 bomber strike. Willard encounters the cavalry’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who assures Willard they will get safely to the river.

• At dawn, Kilgore orders an air attack on a Vietcong-controlled village, and one of the film’s most memorable sequences begins.

• From this point on, Willard and the crew embark on a journey consisting of a number of episodic encounters connected by Willard’s narration.

In the jungle, after the bomb attack

The first episode takes place in the jungle.

Chef’s desire of mangoes leads him and Willard to disembark and explore the

jungle. Among tall trees and dense vegetation, a tiger attacks them. Chef and

Willard run back to the boat.

Chef has a nervous breakdown and darkens the crew’s mood.

Disembarking at the US depot and playboy performermance

Sailing up the river, the crew meets a U.S. base supply depot. They disembark

and collect fuel, cigarettes, and other supplies, then join the crowd of men in an

amphitheatre that has been erected by the river.

Soon, a helicopter arrives and drops three Playboy Playmates onto the stage to

perform in a USO (United Service Organization) show. The Playmates perform

to Flash Cadillac’s song “Suzie Q” and excite the soldiers with seductive

moves.

When some of the soldiers run onto stage, the show is cut short and the

Playmates are quickly evacuated.

Mock war with boats

The crew returns to the PBR, and the boat soon meets other patrol boats

coming in the opposite direction, with whom they engage in mock warfare.

As the crew continues on and tension rises up more frequently, Willard

reviews Kurtz’s dossier.

Lance and Chef are continually under the influence of drugs, and Lance in

particular hardly speaks and paints his face.

Killing civilians in a boat for a puppy

One day, Chief insists on stopping a small boat carrying several Vietnamese

peasants and supplies.

At Chief’s command, Chef boards the boat and searches it. Chief orders Chef

to look inside a rusty yellow can that a peasant woman on the sampan was

sitting on; when Chef does, the woman makes a sudden move toward the can.

Clean starts shooting at random, killing all the civilians on board except the

woman. Once the shooting ends, Chef looks inside the can and finds only a

small puppy.

Noticing the woman is still alive, Chief orders Chef to bring her on board,

saying the crew will take her to a “friendly” hospital nearby. Willard steps

forward, points his gun at the woman’s chest, and fires, killing her so that his

mission can proceed without a detour. The rest of the crew begins to see him in

a different light.

Bridge ouptost under fire; letter about the previous mission against Kurts

Continuing upriver, the crew reaches an army outpost under fire for an

American-held bridge—the last military outpost before the Cambodian

border.

Willard is unable to find a commanding officer onshore but is given a packet of

mail for the boat.

One of the letters in the packet informs Willard that the U.S. military previously

sent another man on the same mission to retrieve Kurtz but that the man is now

operating with Kurtz.

As Clean listens to an audiotape letter from his mother, the PBR comes under

a surprise attack by Vietcong, and Clean is killed.

Another attack: Chef is killed with a spear;

reaching Kurts’s camp (American photojournalist) The boat continues upriver and meet another surprise attack.

Primitive natives onshore shoot a storm of arrows at the PBR.

Chief is impaled with a spear and dies.

The survivors at last reach Kurtz’s camp, a macabre site in which countless

dead bodies and severed heads around.

A hyperactive American photojournalist who had joined Kurtz, greets the boat.

At Kurt’s camp

• Willard and Lance disembark to find Kurtz, leaving Chef with instructions to call in an air strike if they are not back at the boat by a specified time.

• The natives under Kurtz’s control drag Willard through the mud and agree he can talk to Kurtz, who imprisons Willard in a tiger cage.

• During the night, Kurtz throws Chef’s cut head into Willard’s chest.

• Willard is freed the next day and given freedom to walk around Kurtz’s area. He listens to Kurtz’s story and theories for several days.

• In split scenes, Kurtz’s natives perform a ritual sacrifice of a caribou, while the film intercuts with images of Willard emerging from the river and approaching Kurtz’s quarters.

Kurtz is slaughtered

• As the caribou is slaughtered,, Willard slaughters Kurtz with a large knive. Kurtz’s last words are “the horror, the horror.” When Willard emerges, the natives acknowledge him as their new leader and god. He throws down his knife, finds Lance amidst the Montagnard, and returns to the boat. Willard shuts off the radio, and he and Lance leave the shore as rain begins to fall. Kurtz’s last words are repeated in an echo as the film fades to black.

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