Apocalypse Now´s summary

U.S. Army Captain and special operations veteran Benjamin Willard has returned to Saigon since his involvement in the ongoing Vietnam War, where he drinks heavily and destroys his hotel room. One day Willard is called upon by military intelligence officers Lt. General Corman and Colonel Lucas about a top-secret assignment to follow the Nung River into the remote jungle, find Kurtz and kill him .

Willard joins a Navy patrol boat, or PBR, commanded by "Chief" and crewmen Lance , "Chef" and "Mr. Clean" . For escort through the Viet Cong-filled coastal mouth of the Nung River, they rendezvous with reckless Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore , who commands a squadron of armed transport helicopters. Initially scoffing at them, Kilgore befriends Lance as both are keen surfers. Willard sifts through files of Kurtz, learning that he was a once-promising, model officer and could have eventually been promoted to general. Exploring the riverbank, Willard and Chef encounter a tiger. The next day the boat is fired upon by an unseen enemy in the trees, killing Mr. Clean and making Chief even more hostile toward Willard. They are ambushed again, by Montagnard warriors, and return fire, despite Willard's objections. In the fight, Chief is impaled with a spear and tries to pull Willard onto the spearhead before dying. Arriving at Kurtz's outpost at last, Willard takes Lance with him to the village, leaving Chef behind with orders to call an airstrike on the village if they do not return.

In the camp, the two soldiers are met by an eccentric American freelance photographer , who manically praises Kurtz's genius. As they proceed, Willard and Lance see corpses and severed heads scattered about the nearby temple that serves as Kurtz's living quarters. Willard is bound and brought before Kurtz in the darkened temple, where Kurtz derides him as an errand boy.

That night Willard enters Kurtz's chamber as Kurtz is making a tape recording, and attacks him with a machete. Willard descends the stairs from Kurtz's chamber and drops his bloodied weapon. The villagers, kneeling before him, do likewise with all of their own weapons and allow Willard to take Lance by the hand and lead him to the boat.