The only place to go from Apocalypse Now’s heart of darkness was towards Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” a trajectory advertised by its advocates as being bound for glory even as many suspected it was actually a dawn of the dead.
— Adam Nayman (The Ringer)
What, you may ask, does any of this have to do with Vietnam? Of course the Philippines and Vietnam are both in Southeast Asia. But let’s suppose that North Vietnam had invaded the United States in the midst of a civil war. How would we feel if a Vietnamese filmmaker proceeded to Mexico to make a film about our war and wound up shooting a bullfight he happened to visit as a potent example of the activities of typical U.S. savages? And what if he then declared to the press, “My film is not about the United States. It is the United States. It’s what it was really like . . . it was crazy”?
Synopsis: At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.