Apocalypse Now

Rating:
Summary: Epic, anti-heroic morality play
Review: APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX is an interesting film to watch. APOCALYPSE NOW is a great one. The former film truly displays flaws of a draft and Francis Ford Coppola was "on the money" by editing scenes later restored. Robert Duvall's Colonel KILGORE is reduced to near-farce in ANR(helicopter chasing his ripped-off surf board). The Killgore-figure in the original is truly menacing as charismatic,WAR LOVING fanatic who"loves the smell of napalm in the morning". As many reviewers observe,APOCALYPSE NOW is not really about the Vietnam war as much as the REALITY of EVIL that abides in humanity's Heart of Darkness. Marlon Brando plays "the great man and warrior-poet"Colonel Kurtz who "becomes like that which he beholds",consciously transforming himself into a murderous barbarian whose vestige of conscience confronts him with HIMSELF as the HORROR.

Martin Sheen is excellent as Willard, the soldier-assassin sent to kill Kurtz. Sheen's acting is effectively low-key...in contrast to the flamboyant Kilgore/Duvall...and his TEMPTATION to accept Kurtz' mantle of power at the film's climax is convincing and powerful. Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS is among the most disturbing,genuinely terrifying horror fables in Post-Modern literature. Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic extravaganza mythically captures--the sound track is particularly thematically "illuminating"--the demonic "spirit" of anti-heroism in this justly renowned,often gripping a-Morality play about men sinking into their own Gorgan-abyss, Beyond Good & Evil. Here ultimate separation of Church and state,the "poena damni"is dramatically presented in one of cinema's most technically superb,thematically ambitious, indisputable classics...(10 stars)

Rating:
Summary: One of The Best Movies of All Time
Review: To properly understand this awesome movie one must first read "Heart of Darkness". and after that the movie can truly be enjoyed. This is one of the best movies of all time by one one of the best directors, with one of the best actors, and based one of the best books of all time. Any movie lover worth their salt will have seen this movie.


Rating:
Summary: Grew on me as it developed
Review: Visually, 'Apocalypse Now' is one of, if not the, most incredible films I have ever seen. Cinematically it is undoubtedly a masterpiece. The pacing of the movie is remarkable. I had problems with Apocalypse Now for most of the film because I thought it was too dramatic and detached. But by the end, I was completely submerged in it.

Captain Willard is played by Martin Sheen. He is instructed to kill Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an apparently insane American who has broken away from the army to play a brutal God. Every character is fascinating and unsettling. Sheen and Brando are extraordinary in their disturbing roles, as is Robert Duvall as the lieutenant colonel who is at one with the war.

As Willard sails up the river, each place is slightly more surreal and wild than the last. The level of tension and activity rise until Willard reaches his destination. Then the story slows to almost a standstill. The final part of the movie is set apart in a mystical space. Then it all comes together.

Most viewers probably know that Apocalypse Now is based on Joseph Conrad's novella, "Heart of Darkness". It follows the book more closely than I imagined it would, especially in tone. However, Apocalypse Now is its own story.

Rating:
Summary: movie as metaphor
Review: A truly outstanding film by any standards, and in the wake of so many articulate reviews it's hard to add much, beyond giving it further well-deserved praise.

I have always considered AN to be a true Art Movie in the classical sense, and the combination of inspired direction, production, casting, cinematography, screenplay, you name it, almost puts this movie out on its own.

Yet there were a few questionables even in this work of genius. For one thing, it is unlikely that an unsupported Game Warden PBR crew would be interdicting suspect sampans with an important G2 (Army Intelligence) cargo such as Willard on board. It is also unlikely that he would have been entrusted to a crew that was so openly cracked. Still, it makes for a good movie.

If they had to deliver an operative of Sheen's obvious caliber way up river, they would do everything to minimize the risks, not be pulling over junks that could be full of VC, who could lob a satchel charge on board, trigger a Soviet-model Claymore (directionalized fragmentation mine, with a wide kill vector) as the vessels closed in, or just simply pull out AK-47's and RPG's and try to shoot it out, once the weapon arcs of the fifties had been degraded by proximity. i.e. if you're too close, you can't maximize your superior firepower. (Plus, cornered VC would have nothing to lose by firing RPG's point blank.)

Equally, when Kurtz talks about the 'strength' it took for the VC to cut the innoculated arms of the children in the village he had passed through, this is a very misguided belief. If a group of women, with children of their own could do it, it might have been strength. What he saw was the result of cold, masculine detachment. Callousness is not strength.

While it's possible to go beyond this and list various technical flaws, it would be mere nit picking, and the movie deserves better than that. Overall, it succeeds mightily, and remains one of the best Vietnam movies yet made, and one full of memorable characters.

Anybody who thinks that Robert Duvall's Kilgore character is an exaggeration, doesn't know the Air Cav. You had to be crazy, wonderfully crazy, to do what they did, day after day, from the Slick (Huey) pilots to the Snake Drivers (Huey Cobra). The superb Duvall played the role of a lifetime as Kilgore, and he was just about dead on - most of the guys still wear their Stetsons to this day.

If you have never seen this movie, you are in for an incredible experience. I still keep going back to it every few months and amazingly, it never dates or loses its impact.

Look out for Harrison Ford as Colonel Lucas, the Intelligence Officer near the beginning. What a cast.

Rating:
Summary: Seriously Flawed but Nontheless Extraordinary
Review: During the Vietnam war, the jaded Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is given a disturbing mission: to travel by boat deep into the jungle to find and kill a certain Col. Kurtz, once the army's super-achieving golden boy, but now apparently dangerously insane.

This movie draws much of its inspiration from two very different sources. The first is of course Conrad's `Heart of Darkness', one of the best stories ever written. The second is The Doors' ludicrous and pretentious psychedelic rant `The End'. At its best it doesn't quite match up to the former. At its worst it partakes in some of the vices of the latter. The end in particular is anticlimactic. Brando's Kurtz is infinitely more banal than Conrad's. It doesn't help that his entourage is dominated by Dennis Hopper's idiotic hippy spouting stoned out tosh as if Kurtz were Jim Morrison and Hopper a moronically adulating fan. And Kurtz himself, seemingly obsessed with T. S. Eliot, wandering about half naked reciting snatches of the poetry we all read at High School to anyone who will listen, really just falls flat.

But this movie remains eminently worth seeing. It was one of the first ambitious American movies to tackle Vietnam and is way better than many of the successors that folk like Stone and Schumacher have churned out since. It has countless moments of brilliance and visually in particular is often altogether astonishing, a real high point for cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (best known otherwise for his work on many of Bertolucci's films.) Wiliard's increasingly hellish journey up river is brilliant and unforgettable even if what he finds at the end of it rather sinks under the weight of its own pretentions.


Rating:
Summary: Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam.
Review: Vietnam War has inspired many films, ranging from excellent to abominable.
In my opinion there are three outstanding: Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979), Oliver Stone's "Platoon" (1986) and Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" (1987). Each of them shows their director's personal approach to this dramatic and tragic war.

Coppola has constructed his film in an operatically way. This film is more an "idea" of Vietnam War than actually trying to show "real war".
Nevertheless is a powerful and compelling movie. It shows a psychedelic image of this dreadful period. It is more related to hallucinatory perception than to every day's occurrences.
In my opinion, it reflects what the Nam world stands for in the American's collective imagination.

The storyline follows Capt. Willard in his quest to discover and eliminate Col. Kurtz a maddened military gone wild and running a personal amok style war.
In his road to fulfill his commission Willard is involved in a trip similar to Dante's thru Hell.

Images are overwhelming; music score (due to Carmine Coppola as in "The Godfather) is great and underline dramatically the whole story.
Marlon Brando composes a stark Col. Kurtz submerged into darkness (at Brando's request). Martin Sheen fleshes Capt. Willard reflecting accurately his inner turmoil. Last but not least Robert Duvall's Lt. Col. Kilgore and his line "...the smell of victory" is a trade mark in filmography.

A film that exceeds its subject and entered a sort of "all times Hall of Fame". .
Reviewed by Max Yofre.


Rating:
Summary: Very good cinematography
Review: The film has been rated in AFI Top 100 but it is more in the cinematic tradition of on-site, almost-authentic shooting (this was in the Philippines, not in Vietnam) like The Bridge On The River Kwai. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning.... smells like... victory" and other lines by Robert Duvall as well as the character he has enacted are quite memorable. As is the fit (very hilarious) thrown by the 'saucier' Chef after the encounter with the tiger. This film gives you an insight into the minds of demented war-veteran people like the sniper who stalked the DC metro area in Fall 2002. And the exploitation of young, immature (Ignorance truly is bliss) soldiers that are called upon to "serve the nation" in the name of "spreading liberty and democracy". I give it 4 stars instead of 5 because the last portion of the film was, in my opinion, very anti-climactic in the light of the superb denouement that I was expecting.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!!!
Review: There are few movies that I believe exhibit sheer brilliance. To me, I thought 12 O'Clock High and The Sixth Sense fit this category. Apocalypse Now is an absolutely brilliant movie about the travels of Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) who is given a classified assignment to track down a rogue Colonel, Col. Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in Cambodia.

When preparing to write a review for this movie, I was looking for a word to describe it. I thought maybe oxymoron or dichotomous, but neither word was right. A previous reviewer (James Kunz) used the perfect word for this movie, incongruous.

The movie revolves around Capt. Willard's journey via boat to Cambodia. The journey shows the illogical life the young soldiers led in Vietnam. The soldiers were boys who liked to play, but were required to do the job of men and kill the enemy. This was illustrated in many scenes, such as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore's (Robert Duvall) orchestrating an intense offensive attack against the enemy during which he was worried about surfing. Kilgore orders in air strikes to make the beach safe from snipers. A short time later, Kilgore calmly talks about (with the now famous line) how "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" in a scene were seemingly heaven and hell collide behind him. Throughout the journey to Cambodia, there are scenes that show the incongruous nature of the war. At one point, the boat's gunners mate, Lance Johnson is water skiing behind the boat. During the journey, seemingly out of nowhere, a brightly lit state for the USO show suddenly appears. The scene as the boat approaches the Do Lung bridge shows a serene, festively lit bridge amidst a fierce artillery battle. Finally, when Capt. Willard finds the "wicked" Col. Kurtz, the Col. appears to be constructing a utopian society with Montagnards and ex-Gis in the middle of the war.

My meager words could never do the movie justice. While I never been in a war, I feel that this movie does a good job of portraying the confusion and irrationality people experience in war. If you are looking for a classic shoot'em up, blood and guts war movie, this is not it. I would recommend the movie to someone looking for an intellectually stimulating thriller.


Rating:
Summary: Dark and beautiful, haunting and almost poetic
Review: One of the best war movies ever made, Apocalypse Now chronicles Lt. Willard's travels upriver through Vietnam and into Cambodia to assasinate a renegade Colonel.

Coppola's film is a master of the seemingly incongruous. In the middle of a bloody attack is a Lt. Colonel who loves surfing. In the middle of the dark green jungle is an orange and white tiger. Out of the darkness comes the brightly lit Du Long bridge. Among the sea of soldiers in an army base are two playboy bunnies in a USO Show. Amid the destruction and madness at the conclusion of the film is a poetry-quoting colonel and a grungy-looking photojournalist. The contrasts add much to the film, never out-of-place for the sake of shock value, just adding to the anti-war sentiment that is prevalent throughout the film but rarely overtly declared.

Even on the surface this is a very good film. It follows the basic concept of a road movie (travel from point A to point B, with adventures along the way), the characters are interesting and sufficiently developed, the voiceovers never redundant or too expository, the war scenes very well done, with special notice to the helicopter assault on the village and the chaotic, frenzied but strangely beautiful scene at the Du Long bridge. 9.5/10