It was a way we had over here of living with ourselves.
We'd cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid.
It was a lie.
And the more I saw of them...
the more I hated lies.
Those boys were never gonna look at me the same way again...
but I felt like I knew one or two things about Kurtz that weren't in the dossier.
Do Lung Bridge was the last army outpost on the Nung River.
Beyond it, there was only Kurtz.
- What do you think? - It's beautiful.
Huh? What's the matter with you?
You're acting kind of weird.
Hey, you know that last tab of acid I was saving?
- I dropped it. - You dropped acid?
Far out.
Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!
Take me home!
Goddam it!
- Fucking shore police! Shit! - Man, you wanna die?
Don't keep goin'!
- You fuckin' police! - Don't leave me!
Fuck you!
You'll get what you deserve!
Is there a Captain Willard on board?
- Yeah. - Captain Willard?
- Yeah. Who's that? - Lieutenant Carlsen, sir.
Get that light off me!
I was sent here from Nha Trang with these three days ago, sir.
Expected you here a little sooner. This is mail for the boat.
- Don't know how happy this makes me. - Why?
Now I can get out of here, if I can find a way.
You're in the asshole of the world, Captain.
Captain, where you going?
See if I can find some fuel and get some information.
Pick me up at the other side of the bridge.
Somebody go with him. Chef.
I'll go.
I wanna go.
Man, listen to the music, man.
Where can I find the CO?
You came right to it, son of a bitch!
Get down here!
You still got a commanding officer here?
- Beverly Hills. - What?
Straight up the road, there's a concrete fucking bunker called Beverly Hills!
Where the fuck else do you think it would be?
- Goddam it! You stepped in my face. - I thought you were dead.
Well, you thought wrong, damn it!
I told you to stop fucking with me, didn't I?
You think you're so bad, huh, nigger?
What are you shooting at, soldier?
What the fuck ya think I'm shootin' at?
I'm sorry, sir. There are gooks out there by the wire.
But I think I killed them all.
You ain't shot shit. Listen.
Oh, shit. He's trying to call his friends. Send up a flare.
Think you so bad, huh, nigger? You think you bad, huh?
They're all dead, stupid.
There's one still alive underneath them bodies.
Who's the commanding officer here?
Ain't you?
You think you so bad?
I got something for your ass now, nigger! I got something for you now!
He's underneath the bodies, man.
Go get the Roach for me.
Go get the Roach, nigger! Go get the Roach.
Roach. Roach.
Got slopes on the wire, man. You hear 'em?
Do you hear 'em?
Fuck you, GI!
We'll bust 'em!
Hey, GI, fuck you!
Fuck you, GI!
Hear him out there on the wire, man?
- I kill you, GI! - You need a flare?
He's close, man. He's real close.
Fuck you, GI! I kill you!
Fuck you, GI!
GI, fuck you!
GI! GI...
Motherfucker.
Hey, soldier.
Do you know who's in command here?
Holy shit.
Hey, Chief, man. Two guys just got blown off that bridge.
You hang on, man. You're gonna be okay.
- What's that? - Mail, man. Mail.
Later on the mail. Watch them trees.
There's no diesel fuel, but I picked up some ammo.
Let's move out.
- Did you find the CO, Captain? - There's no fucking CO here.
Let's just get goin'.
Which way, Captain?
You know which way, Chief.
You're on your own, Captain.
Still wanna go on?
It's like this bridge.
We build it every night, Charlie blows it right back up again...
just so the generals can say the road's open.
Think about it.
- Who cares? - Just get us upriver!
Chef, on the bow.
- Stand by, Clean. - Let's go!
You got one, Miller. Jeez, I got some too.
Whose package is that?
- Shit, you got another one, Clean. - No shit? Wait a minute.
- Is that it? - That's it for you. Lance.
Mr. L.B. Johnson, there you go.
Far out, man. All right. I've been waitin' for this one.
I got another one. I got a box from Eva.
"Lance. I'm fine. I'm fine.
Sue and I went tripping in Disneyland. Sue skinned her knee."
Man, I wanna get back to Antoine's.
"I remember the time we went up to..." How could I fucking forget? Beautiful.
"There could never be a place like Disneyland, or could there?
Let me know."
Jim, it's here. It really is here.
"There has been a new development regarding your mission...
which we must now communicate to you.
Months ago, a man was ordered on a mission which was identical to yours.
We have reason to believe that he is now operating with Col. Kurtz.
Saigon was carrying him MIA for his family's sake...
but they assumed he was dead.
Then they intercepted a letter he tried to send to his wife. "
Captain Richard Colby.
He was with Kurtz.
Disneyland.
Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland.
"Charles Miller Manson ordered the slaughter of all in the home...
anyway as a symbol of protest."
That's really weird, ain't it?
- Purple haze. Look, man. - Hey, Lance, put away that smoke.
- I got a tape from my mom. - Rainbow reality, man.
Hey, Chief, get a good whiff.
Eva can't picture me in Vietnam.
She pictures me at home having a beer watching TV.
Hey, Lance, man.
Oh, hot potato, hot potato.
I'm so glad you decided to join the navy.
Eva's not sure she can have a relationship with me, you know.
Here I am, 13,000 fucking miles away...
trying to keep a relationship with my ass.
That's much more than I can say for some of your friends.
If this tape is any good...
I will have Dad and the family send you a tape of their own.
Fuckers!
There! Over there!
Motherfuckers!
There. Over there!
Chef, check out Clean! Captain, he's hit. Clean's hit.
Where'd the dog go?
Lance! Lance! They got Clean.
Where's the dog? We gotta go back and get the dog.
Hey, Clean. Hey.
Hey, bubba.
Bubba, you can't die, you fucker!
Hey, bubba.
And so I'm hoping that... pretty soon... not too soon...
but pretty soon I'll have a lot of grandchildren to love and spoil.
And then when your wife get 'em back, she'll be mad with me.
Even Aunt Jessie and Mama...
will come to celebrate your coming home.
Granny and Dad are trying to get enough money to get you a car...
but don't tell 'em because that's our secret.
Anyhow, do the right thing...
stay out of the way of the bullets...
and bring your heinie home all in one piece...
because we love you very much.
Love, Mom.
Hold on.
Throw me the glasses.
Lance, take a 16 on the bow.
Chef. Chef. On the 60.
Fuck me.
Cover the captain. Lance.
Cover the captain.
They're French. They're French.
Pick up that weapon! Pick it up! Pick it up!
Stand fast. Captain.
All right, you men. Put down your weapons.
We lost one of our men.
We French always pay respect to the dead of our allies.
You're all welcome.
My name is Hubert DeMarais.
This is my family's plantation.
It has been such for 70 years.
And it will be such until we are all dead.
Captain, accept the flag of Tyrone Miller...
on behalf of a grateful nation.
This food is really wonderful, isn't it? The wine, the sauces.
I can't believe it. Hey, can I speak with the chef?
The chef speak only Vietnamese.
No kidding? He cooks like this and he can't even speak French?
Hey, Lance, the chef's a slope.
This is Baudelaire. It's a very cruel poem for children.
But they need it, 'cause life sometimes is very cruel.
As you can see.
Attack repels by the family.
Just for this war.
Vietcong, 58. North Vietnamese, 12.
South Vietnamese, 11.
Americans, six?
Yes. Well, there were perhaps mistakes.
May I present Captain Willard. He is of a paratroop regiment.
Madame Sarrault.
Captain.
Oh, I'm sorry, Captain. It was just a little story...
about Paris and people starving during the war.
They are all around the table, and there was a silence and somebody say...
"An angel is passing by."
So somebody said, "Let's eat it."
Oh.
How long can you possibly stay here?
We stay forever.
No, no. I mean...
why don't you go back home to France?
- Back home? - I mean, this is our home, Captain.
Sooner or later, you're...
You don't understand our mentality...
the French officer mentality!
At first, we lose in Second World War.
I don't say that you Americans win, but we lose.
Oh, Papa...
In Dien Bien Phu, we lose. In Algeria, we lose.
In Indochina, we lose!
But here we don't lose!
This piece of earth, we keep it.
We will never lose it. Never!
You Americans.
In 1945, yeah...
after the Japanese war, your President Roosevelt...
didn't want the French people to stay in Indochina.
So...
you Americans implant the Vietminh.
What's he mean?
Yeah, that's true. The Vietcong were invented by the Americans.
The Americans?
And now you take the French place...
and the Vietminh fight you.
And what can you do?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The Vietnamese are very intelligent. You never know what they think.
The Russian ones who help them, "Come and give us their money.
We are all Communists. Chinese, give us guns. We are all brothers."
They hate the Chinese!
Maybe they hate the American less than the Russian and the Chinese.
I mean, if tomorrow the Vietnamese are Communists...
they will be Vietnamese Communists.
And this is something that you never understood, you American.
I don't know.
Maybe in the future we can make something with the Vietminh.
Don't you understand?
The VC say, "Go away. Go away."
That's finish for all the white people in Indochina.
If you're French, American, that's all the same.
"Go." They want to forget you. Look, Captain.
Look, this is the truth. An egg.
The white left...
but the yellow stays!
When I was in Saigon, I spoke to an American politician.
He explained it very well. He said, "Look.
Yesterday, it was Korea. Today, Vietnam.
Tomorrow, Thailand, the Philippines...
then maybe Europe."
Come on. Why not Europe?
Look what happened in Czechoslovakia recently.
Even before Second World War Americans knew exactly what was going on.
They don't want that shit to take over! LeFevre!
All you white people are shit.
They are fighting... fighting for freedom.
Freedom? Bullshit.
French bullshit. American bullshit.
Dien Bien Phu, that serious.
All soldiers know they are already dead.
You know anything about Dien Bien Phu?
- Yeah, I know. - No, you don't.
- Not really. - Dien Bien Phu was an error.
A military mistake.
A mistake? A voluntary mistake!
Voluntary!
All the soldiers knew. We knew we would be dead.
The generals and the colonels believe it's impossible for the Viets...
to get the cannon up there in the mountains.
But they do. Then they wait for the rain to come.
When it comes, no aeroplane can fly there.
And our paratroopers jump at 90 meters.
I mean, you know, 90 meters... 70 meters.
I mean, that's crazy. No army in the world can do that.
And they only do that to be dead with their friends.
The French Army was sacrificed.
Sacrificed by the politicians safe at home.
They put the army in an impossible situation where they couldn't win.
The students are marching in Paris...
protesting, demonstrating.
They stab the soldiers in their back.
The soldier would open the grenade, it wouldn't work.
A piece of paper would fall...
"Union of French Women." "We are for the Viets."
Traitors! Communist traitors at home.
Dien Bien Phu, okay.
The French is shit, huh?
No one care. No one want...
Why don't you Americans learn from us, from our mistakes?
Mon Dieux, with your army, your strength...
your power, you could win if you want to!
You can win.
You know, I'm sure we can make something here.
I'm sure about it, you know?
I never do something wrong to the people here.
That's right, but the Communist at home have never been traitors.
- Communist! - Socialist!
Capitaine, good night. He was a Socialist, you know.
We can stay. I know that we can stay. We can.
You know, we always helped the people.
We work with the people.
So we can be friends, we are agreed.
See, Captain, when my grandfather...
and my uncle's father came here...
there was nothing... nothing.
The Vietnamese were nothing.
So we worked hard...
very hard, and brought...
the rubber from Brazil, and then plant it here.
We took the Vietnamese, work with them...
make something...
something out of nothing.
So when you ask me why we want to stay here, Captain...
we want to stay here because it's ours... it belongs to us.
It keeps our family together.
I mean, we fight for that.
While you Americans, you are fighting for...
the biggest nothing in history.
I'm sorry, Captain. I will see if your men need any help to...
repair your boat...
so that you can go on with your war.
I apologize for my family, Captain.
We have all lost much here.
Hubert... his wife and two sons.
And I have lost a husband.
I understand.
You are tired of the war.
I can see it in your face.
'Twas the same in the eyes of the soldiers of our war.
We called them "Les Soldats Perdus..."
The Lost Soldiers.
If you like, we can have some cognac.
I have to... to see about my men and...
The war will be still here tomorrow.
Yeah, I guess you're right.
I noticed you had no wine at dinner.
No, I don't drink wine.
I do like cognac, but I don't want any now. Thank you.
Well...
then I... I must drink alone.
Will you go back after the war to America?
Then you're like us... your home is here.
Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?
Yeah. 'Cause it's always moving.
I used to prepare a pipe for my husband.
'Twas the morphine he took for the wounds he suffered in his heart.
He would rage and he would cry, my lost soldier.
And I said to him, "There are two of you.
Don't you see?
One that kills and one that loves."
And he said to me...
"I don't know whether I'm an animal or a god."
But you are both.
You want more?
All that matters is that you're alive.
You are alive, Captain.
That's the truth.
There are two of you, don't you see?
One that kills...
and one that loves.
Can't see nothing. We stoppin'.
You're not authorized to stop this boat, Chief.
I said I can't see a thing, Captain. I'm stopping this boat.
I ain't riskin' no more lives.
I'm in command here, goddam it. You'll do what I say.
You see anything, Chef?
Why don't they fucking attack, man?
Watch it over here, Chief.
Got a stump.
On the fifties.
He was close.
He was real close.
I couldn't see him yet, but I could feel him...
as if the boat were being sucked upriver...
and the water was flowing back into the jungle.
Whatever was going to happen...
it wasn't going to be the way they called it back in Nha Trang.
- Arrows! - Fire!
Chef, open up! Fire!
Lance, fire!
Chef! Chef, it's okay. Quit firing.
- They're just little toy arrows. - Cut it out! Quiet!
Chief, tell them to hold their fire!
They're just little sticks. They're just trying to scare us.
Quiet!
You got us into this mess, and now you can't get us out...
because you don't know where the hell you're going, do ya?
Do ya?
You son of a bitch! You bastard!
Lance, get the wheel!
You savages! Come and get it! You son of a bitches!
A spear?
My mission is to make it up into Cambodia.
There's a Green Beret colonel up there who's gone insane...
and I'm supposed to kill him.
That's fucking typical! Shit!
Fuckin' Vietnam mission!
I'm short and we gotta go up there so you can kill one of our own guys?
That's fucking great! That's just fucking great, man.
Shit! That's fuckin' crazy.
I mean, I thought you were going in to blow up a bridge...
or some fuckin' railroad tracks or somethin'.
- That's all right. - No. No, wait. Wait.
We'll go together, on the boat. We'll go with you.
We'll go up there, but on the boat. Okay?
Part of me was afraid of what I would find...
and what I would do when I got there.
I knew the risks...
or imagined I knew.
But the thing I felt the most...
much stronger than fear...
was the desire to confront him.
Just keep movin'.
Lance, keep your hands away from the guns.