Charlie don't surf!

Apocalypse now isn't a great film. Back in the late 70's the yanks were doing some serious soul searching after being ignominiously turfed out of vietnam, and this film is one of a bunch of similar horror stories inflicted on the viewers, like 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Platoon'.

Among the movie's conscript cannon fodder, however, there's one man at least enjoying his war. And he delivers one truly great scene. Enter colonel Kilgore.

You''ll have seen the U.S. Cavalry on screen at some time, galloping to see off the injuns, with bugles, yellow scarves and big floppy hats. Well by the 1960's they had been re-equiped with helicopters and tasked with seeing off charlie from vietnam instead. Kilgore's unit have to get Martin Sheen's bunch, and their patrol boat, past a coastal village held by the vietcong. He's already set the mood when, after an earlier attack, he chucks air cav personalised playing cards on the bodies to 'let charlie know who did it'.

The 15 - minute long helicopter attack is the only bit of the movie worth watching, for me. It starts with Kilgore, in floppy cavalry hat and yellow scarf, striding past lines of helicopters, jets howling and rotors spinning as they spool up to take - off. 'How you feeling, Jimmy?' he says to the door gunner. Jimmy, grinning and readying his M60, yells back 'Like a MEAN MUTHERFUCKER, sir!' Then Kilgore, boarding his chopper (with the cavalry's crossed sabres and 'death from above' painted on its nose), shouts to a bugler - a BUGLER, for god's sake - 'Ok, son, let her rip!' And the bugler sounds the charge as the camera, in one of the best shots of all time, follows the choppers as they rise behind him and sweep into the dawn sky to do battle.

The rest of the attack sequence shows Kilgore's ethos has been embraced by his men. The choppers attack with PA systems blasting out 'The Ride of the Valkyries', enthusiastically gunning down everything that moves. Kilgore, absolutely fearless and surf - mad, (the 'Charlie don't surf!' line was in an earlier scene) has his men surfing, whilst mortar bombs fall all around. And when the treeline is obliterated in a cauldron of flame, He gets to say how he loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like victory, apparently.

Don't bother with the rest of the film. Apart from the waterskiing - behind - the - patrol boat scene, it's downhill all the way from here.

Oh yeah, the yanks lost the war, by the way.