'T was 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, goddamn 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.
l 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 l 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.
It's all right! It's all right! It's all been approved!
I ain't comin' in there! Them bastards attacked us!
Hey, zap 'em with your siren, man. Zap 'em with your siren.
There's mines over there and mines over there too.
And watch out. Those goddamn monkeys will bite you, I'll tell you.
Ah, that's a pretty one. Move it right in towards me.
I'm an American.
Yeah. An American civilian. Hi, Yanks.
Hi. American.
American civilian. It's all right.
And you got the cigarettes. And that's what I've been dreaming about.
- Who are you? - Who are you?
I'm a photojournalist.
I've covered the war since '64.
I've been in Laos, Cambodia and 'Nam.
Hoo-wee, baby. I'll tell you one thing. This boat is a mess, man.
Who are all these people?
Yeah, well, they think you've come to--
to take him away.
- And I hope that isn't true. - Take who away?
Him! Col. Kurtz.
These are all his children, man, as far as you can see.
Hell, man, out here we're all his children.
Could we talk to Col. Kurtz?
Hey, mac. You don't talk to the colonel.
Well, you listen to him.
The man's enlarged my mind.
He's a poet warrior in the classic sense.
I mean, sometimes he'll--
Well, you say hello to him, right?
He'll just walk by you and he won't even notice you.
Then suddenly he'll grab you and he'll throw you in a corner and he'll say...
``Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in 'life'?
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you.''
I'm a little man. I'm a little man. He's a great man.
``I should have been a pair of ragged claws...
scuttling across floors of silent seas.''
- I mean-- - Stay with the boat.
Don't go any-- Don't go without me, okay? I wanna get a picture.
He can be terrible and he can be mean...
and he can be right.
He's fighting the war. He's a great man.
I mean--
I wish I had words, you know. I wish I had words.
I could tell you something like, the other day he wanted to kill me.
- Something like that. - Why'd he want to kill you?
Because I took his picture.
He said, ``If you take my picture again...
I'm gonna kill you.''
And he meant it.
See, just lay cool. Lay cool.
Lay back. Dig it.
He gets friendly again. He really does.
But you don't-- you don't-- you don’t judge the colonel.
You don’t judge the colonel like an ordinary man.
Okay, watch it now. These are Americans. Americans!
You can feel the vibe of this place.
Let me take your picture. Hey, could you hold-- Hey, hello. Hello.
Could you hold up a minute?
Colby.
The heads.
You're looking at the heads.
I, uh-- Sometimes he goes too far.
He's the first one to admit it.
- He's gone crazy. - Wrong, wrong!
If you could have heard the man just two days ago--
if you could have heard him then, God--
- You were gonna call him crazy? - Fuckin' A!
I just wanna talk to him.
Well, man, he's gone away.
He's gone away. He disappeared out in the jungle with his people.
- I'll wait for him. - He feels comfortable with his people.
He forgets himself with his people.
- He forgets himself. - Captain?
Maybe we should wait back at the boat.
- I think you should-- - Okay, Chef.
We'll go back to the boat for a while.
Yeah, stay with Lance.
This colonel guy, he's wacko, man.
He's worse than crazy. He's evil!
I mean, that's what the man's got set up here, man!
It's fuckin' pagan idolatry. Look around you!
- Shit, he's loco. - Then you'll help me?
Fuckin' A, I'll help you. I'll do anything to get out of this joint.
- Good boy. - We could blow all them assholes away.
They're so fuckin' spaced out, they wouldn't even know it.
I ain't afraid of all them fuckin' skulls and altars and shit.
I used to think if I died in an evil place...
then my soul wouldn't be able to make it to Heaven.
But now, fuck--
I mean, I don't care where it goes, as long as it ain't here.
So what do you wanna do? I'll kill the fuck.
- Get out of here. - I'm gonna need you to wait here, Chef.
I'll go up with Lance and scrounge around, check the place out.
See if I can find the colonel, okay?
Well, what do you want me to do?
Here. You take the radio...
and if I don't get back by 2200 hours...
you call in the air strike.
``Air strike?''
The code is ``Almighty''...
coordinates zero-niner-two-six- four-seven-one-two.
It's all in there.
Zero-niner-two-six- four-seven-one-two.
Everything I saw told me that Kurtz had gone insane.
The place was full of bodies--
North Vietnamese, Vietcong, Cambodians.
If I was still alive, it was because he wanted me that way.
it smelled like slow death in there--
malaria...
and nightmares.
This was the end of the river, all right.
Where are you from, Willard?
I'm from Ohio, sir.
Were you born there?
Yes, sir.
Whereabouts?
Toledo, sir.
How far are you from the river?
The Ohio River, sir?
About 200 miles.
I went down that river once when I was a kid.
There's a place in the river-- I can't remember--
Must've been a gardenia plantation or a flower plantation at one time.
It's all wild and overgrown now. But for about--
for about five miles you'd think that...
heaven just fell on the earth...
in the form of gardenias.
Have you ever considered...
any real freedoms?
Freedoms from the opinion of others?
Even the opinions of yourself?
Did they say why, Willard?
Why they wanted to terminate my command?
I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
It's no longer classified, is it?
What did they tell you?
They told me...
that you had gone...
totally insane...
and that your methods...
were unsound.
Are my methods unsound?
I don't see any method...
at all, sir.
I expected...
someone like you.
What did you expect?
Are you an assassin?
I'm a soldier.
You're neither.
You're an errand boy...
sent by grocery clerks...
to collect the bill.
Why, huh?
Why would a nice guy like you wanna kill a genius?
Feeling pretty good, huh?
Why?
Do you know--
Do you know that the man--
the man really likes you?
He likes you. He really likes you.
But he's got something in mind for you.
Aren't you curious about that?
I'm curious. I'm very curious. Are you curious?
There's something happening out here, man.
You know something, man. I know something that you don't know.
That's right, Jack.
The man is clear in his mind...
but his soul is mad.
Oh, yeah.
He's dying, I think.
He hates all this. He hates it.
But the man's--
He reads poetry out loud, all right?
And a voice--
a voice--
He likes you 'cause you're still alive.
He's got plans for you. No, no, I'm not gonna help you.
You're gonna help him, man. You're gonna help him.
I mean, what are they gonna say, man, when he's gone, huh?
'Cause he dies when it dies, man. When it dies, he dies.
What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? He was a kind man?
He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom?
Bullshit, man!
Am I gonna be the one that's gonna set them straight? Look at me. Wrong!
You.
Almost eight hours.
I'm asleep.
I'm asleep and dreaming I'm on this shitty boat.
Fuck.
Has it been eight hours?
Hello. Almighty. Almighty.
This is PBR Street Gang. Radio check. Over.
PBR Street Gang, this is Almighty standing by. Over.
Oh, Jesus!
Oh, Christ!
Time magazine.
The weekly newsmagazine.
September 22, 1 967. Volume 90...
number 1 2.
``The War on the Horizon. The American people may find it hard to believe...
that the US is winning the war in Vietnam.
Nevertheless...
one of the most exhaustive inquiries...
into the status of the conflict yet compiled...
offers considerable evidence that the weight of US power...
two-and-a-half years after the big buildup began...
is beginning to make itself felt.
White House officials maintain the impact of that strength...
may bring the enemy to the point where he could...
simply be unable to continue fighting.''
Is this familiar?
``Because Lyndon Johnson fears that the US public...
is in no mood to accept its optimistic conclusions...
he may never permit the report to be released in full.
Even so, he is sufficiently impressed with the findings...
and sufficiently anxious to make their conclusions known...
to permit experts who have been working on it...
to talk about it in general terms.''
No date, Time magazine.
``Sir Robert Thompson...
who led the victory over Communist guerillas in Malaya...
is now a RAND corporation consultant...
recently returned to Vietnam to sound out the situation for President Nixon.
He told the president last week...
that things felt much better...
and smelled much better over there.''
How do they smell to you, soldier?
You'll be free. You'll be under guard.
Read these at your leisure.
Don't lose them.
Don't try to escape. You'll be shot.
We can talk of these things later.
``We are the hollow men.
We are the stuffed men...
leaning together at peace filled with straw.
Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together...
are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass...
or a rat's feet over broken glass in a dry cellar.
He's really out there.
Shape without form...
shade without color...
paralyzed force...
gesture without motion.''
Do you know what the man's saying? Do you?
This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics.
It's one through nine. No maybes, no supposes, no fractions.
You can't travel in space. You can't go out into space, you know...
without like, you know, with fractions.
What are you gonna land on? One-quarter? Three-eighths?
What are you gonna do when you go from here to Venus?
That's dialectic physics, okay.
Dialectic logic is, there's only love and hate.
You either love somebody or you hate 'em.
Mutt!
You mutt.
This is the way the fucking world is.
Look at this fucking shit we're in, man!
Not with a bang. A whimper.
And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack.
On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him...
I'd know what to do.
But it didn't happen.
I was in there with him for days. Not under guard.
I was free.
But he knew I wasn't going anywhere.
He knew more about what I was going to do than I did.
If the generals back in Nha Trang could see what I saw...
would they still want me to kill him?
More than ever, probably.
And what would his people back home want if they ever learned...
just how far from them he'd really gone?
He broke from them...
and then he broke from himself.
I'd never seen a man so broken up and...
ripped apart.
I've seen the horrors--
horrors that you've seen.
But you have no right to call me a murderer.
You have a right to kill me.
You have a right to do that.
But you have no right to judge me.
It's impossible for words...
to describe...
what is necessary...
to those...
who do not know...
what horror means.
Horror.
Horror has a face.
And you must make a friend of horror.
Horror and moral terror...
are your friends.
If they are not...
then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies.
I remember when I was with Special Forces.
Seems a thousand centuries ago.
We went into a camp to inoculate...
some children.
We'd left the camp...
after we had inoculated the children for polio.
And this old man came running after us, and he was crying.
He couldn't say.
We went back there...
and they had come and hacked off...
every inoculated arm.
There they were, in a pile--
a pile of...
little arms.
And I remember...
I-I-- I cried.
I wept like...
some grandmother.
I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do.
And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it.
I never want to forget.
And then I realized...
like I was shot--
like I was shot with a diamond--
a diamond bullet right through my forehead.
And I thought, ``My God, the genius of that.
The genius.''
The will to do that.
Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.
And then I realized...
they were stronger than me because they could stand it.
These were not monsters. These were men--
trained cadres.
These men who fought with their hearts...
who have families, who have children...
who are filled with love...
that they had the strength--
the strength...
to do that.
If I had ten divisions of those men...
then our troubles here would be over very quickly.
You have to have men...
who are moral...
and at the same time...
who are able to...
utilize their...
primordial instincts to kill...
without feeling, without passion...
without judgment-- without judgment.
Because it’s judgment that defeats us.
I worry that my son...
might not understand what I've tried to be.
And if I were to be killed, Willard...
I would want someone to go to my home...
and tell my son everything.
Everything I did. Everything you saw.
Because there's nothing that I detest more than...
the stench of lies.
And if you understand me, Willard, you--
you will do this for me.
PBR Street Gang, this is Almighty. Over.
PBR Street Gang, this is Almighty standing by. Over.
PBR Street Gang, this is Almighty standing by. How do you copy?
They were gonna make me a major for this...
and I wasn't even in their fuckin' army anymore.
Everybody wanted me to do it.
Him most of all.
I felt like he was up there...
waiting for me to take the pain away.
He just wanted to go out like a soldier...
standing up.
Not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade.
Even the jungle wanted him dead.
And that’s who he really took his orders from anyway.
Come on, baby take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus tonight
Blue bus tonight
Blue
Come on, yeah
We train young men to drop fire on people...
but their commanders...
won't allow them to write ``fuck''...
on their airplanes because...
it's obscene.
The horror.
Calling PBR Street Gang.
PBR Street Gang, this is Almighty. Do you read me? Over.
PBR Street Gang?
PBR Street Gang, this is Almighty--
The horror.
Ripped and Spellchecked by: Bartender