How does Colonel Kurtz become a rogue officer in Apocalypse Now?

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Francis Ford Coppola, with a beard, sits on a camera dolly surrounded by crew and actors on the set of The Godfather: Part II, with storefronts in the background. — Francis Ford Coppola American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola won the Oscar for best director for *The Godfather: Part II* (1974).

In the film Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Colonel Walter Kurtz becomes a rogue officer after abandoning a promising military career to join the Special Forces.1

While he was once on a fast track for promotion to general, Kurtz ultimately chose to pursue his own path. His descent into becoming a renegade is marked by his loss of sanity and his decision to operate entirely outside the bounds of acceptable human behavior. Stationed deep in the Cambodian jungle, he rules over the Montagnard tribal people, effectively "playing god." His rogue status is solidified by his unsanctioned order to murder four suspected South Vietnamese double agents, an act that leads the U.S. military to view him as insane and order his assassination.1