In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.

The Earth is about to be destroyed by a huge ball of fire racing toward the planet. Cornelius, an old monk, knows how to stop the burning sphere with the help of Korben Dallas, a taxi driver and former secret agent and a woman named Leeloo.