Cinema Spelunking: War films (What are they good for?) In Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” the air thickens with smoke as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) orders a helicopter strike on the nearby Viet Cong-controlled coastal village. Sharp gunshots pierce the rattling groans of whirling helicopter blades. Kilgore, wearing a cowboy hat and no shirt, stands in the bruised sands littered with broken branches, bellowing commands to his frazzled soldiers. The camera cuts to an aerial shot of airplanes flying over a vast forest; towering trees suddenly erupt into flames, and the camera flits between different vantage points to capture the magnitude of this destruction. Gazing at the rising pillars of smoke, Kilgore crouches beside Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) and delivers the immortal line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Behind him, villagers file into a long procession while flames wave and dance in the distance.