Farewell to the King

Or Apocalypse Now revisited. When, in a World War II mission to mobilise resistance against the Japs, plucky Brit officer (Havers) and his black radioman (McRae) parachute into Borneo, they find the tribes united in peace under US Army deserter-turned-king Nolte. This Great White God proves reluctant to fall in with the fork-tongued Allied forces until a surprise Jap attack on his village. Persuaded that he 'can't avoid History', Nolte leads his men into war against the brutal, oddly honourable enemy, and thus enters the dominion of Myth. Havers and Nolte proceed from initial suspicion, through wary respect, to the kind of unspoken love between men that remains a matter of adoring glances; and Havers braves the top brass in an effort to guarantee post-war freedom for Nolte's Noble Savages. Despite the craftsmanlike visual bravura, entire scenes verge on incoherence, and the portentous script serves only to expose how vague and misplaced is Milius' faith in anarchism. Where once he seemed an original, now he merely regurgitates his own woolly, vacuous clichés.