Excellent war film. Apocalypse Now illustrates the horror, the absurdity, and the futility of war, but most important it portrays war's damaging psychological effects. A descent too far inward thus becomes a descent into hell—a hell brought on by the metaphorical journey upriver. The atrocities of war have caused the each character to lose all sense of self and to become an other, an empty shell that can no longer recognize itself or, like Kurtz, discriminate along moral lines. But while Apocalypse Now implies that war effectively displaces the self and the rights and wrongs of morality, its conclusion suggests that the soul is capable of rejecting such darkness.