Continuity mistake: In the playboy bunny scene, the helicopter's main rotor keeps on starting and stopping. (01:06:39)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest
The only people on the PBR Streetgang to survive are Willard (Martin Sheen) and Lance (Sam Bottoms). Lance practically becomes a member of all Kurtz's people and takes part in the animal sacrifice. While Willard slowly contemplates killing Kurtz (Marlon Brando). He eventually carries out his orders and eliminates Kurtz by chopping him to pieces. Willard reads a page from Kurtz's journal, where Kurtz had written 'DROP THE BOMB, EXTERMINATE THEM ALL'. Willard walks out, where all of Kurtz's people stand their motionless watching him. He walks through them, grabs Lance and heads back to the boat. They sail off. (Redux Version) The Destruction of the Kurtz Compound by airstrike is added.
Trivia: Harvey Keitel was originally cast as Captain Willard. Two weeks into filming, director Francis Ford Coppola felt Keitel wasn't taking the role seriously enough, so he fired him and reshot scenes with Martin Sheen as his replacement.
More questions & answers from Apocalypse Now
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Chosen answer: Kurtz was protected by political connections and his military record from being relieved of command, and the Montagnard people whose village he was in were considered American allies, so they couldn't just send a force in to kill him or relieve him of command, but an individual assassin. (The US Government's "official" policy is that they do not engage in assassination, which is why "this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist").
Captain Defenestrator