The Horror:

I was not that impressed with "Apocalypse Now". This may be, in retrospect, because I do not feel that I liked it. It just did not draw me in as the other films have, and I felt like the whole film was plodding along. It definitely had suspense in that I was eagerly awaiting Sheen's arrival into the world of Kurtz. It just did not deliver. I was not impressed with Kurtz in any way. He seemed like a sick, old, twisted man that did not deserve the position of power he had acquired. I saw nothing appealing in him. There were so many unexplored avenues that could have been taken with this film that simply were not. We need to see Kurtz as a intelligent radical worthy of our attention and compassion. Instead, to me at least, he was portrayed as a man deserving of death. I had no qualms over Sheen killing him the way he did and felt that the Army was more than justified in ordering his execution. I wanted a better grasp of the motives behind Kurtz's actions - what drove him to the point of insanity and why does he do what he does now? None of this was delivered. Perhaps it was to be left up to the audience to determine these things, but I just think that too little was revealed. Sheen, I think, understood Kurtz from the beginning. The only difference between the two men was that Kurtz succumbed to his insanity while Sheen faced his own head on and kept moving forward. The last words spoken by Kurtz (and what are probably supposed to be the most memorable), "the horror," represent the horror of life and the evil of which mankind is capable. Kurtz personified this evil by fully surrendering to his own "dark side" and releasing it upon the world.