Rating: 
Summary: Epic war mythology
Review: "Apocalypse Now" is considered one of the greatest movies ever made; and for the most part, I agree. It's set during The Vietnam War as shell shocked Cpt. Willard (Martin Sheen), an Army/CIA operative, is assigned to find and kill Col. Kurtz. The mission seems rediculous, murder a highly decorated and honored American militery officer. As Willard goes along, he encounters several colorful character, like Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), a nutty Calvery commander who orders his men to surf during a morter attack. The men in his PT boat are just regulor soldiers trying to survive and go home. Willard is seriously depressed, and his second tour is just a way not to have to deal with it. In the end, he dosn't realy believe in anything. Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) is the other side othe coin; he is a war mongerer, a psychotic version of Patton. He is totally mad, and dosn't even want to try to restrain himself. He totally believes that the atrosities he commits is the only way to win a war. When Willard finally gets to Kurtz's camp, he finds Kurtz is revered by the inigionous tribes and deserter soldiers as a god. The movie is sort of framed like the Greek myths, where the hero must decend to the underworld and face Hades, except like Pirithous, Willard dosn't quiet get out. Francis Ford Coppola's movie is wonderful, dark and gritty. Not only is war terrible, so is the warrior's mind set. The cast is amazing, Sheen's Willard broods with the best of them. Brando is thoughly insane, all that method acting really pays off here. And then there is Duvall's Kilgore, sort of the middle ground between Willard's depression and Kurtz's mania. He is gleefully cheerful as a man who loves war, loves his men, and loves a good wave. He is silly, but not to dangourous, a man who could thrive in a place like Vietnam. It's a classic war movie, maybe not totally authentic, but it's still powerful drama.
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Summary: Apocalypse Now #1 of the vietnam movies
Review: Apocalypse Now is by far better than platoon. This movie blows Full Metal Jacket out of the water. The redux is not as good as the original. #1! The order for the Vietnam movies best to worst, #1 Apocalypse Now, #2 Full Metal Jacket, #3The Deer Hunter, #4Platoon
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Summary: Haiku Review
Review: Sheen stalks Brando in
Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Duvall steals the film.
Rating: 
Summary: Inaccurate but still a trip
Review: First, let me say on behalf of the men who served in Vietnam, that this is a work of fiction. Most were too busy fighting for their lives to murder innocent men, women and children. Yes, there were several incidents in which American soldiers committed atrocities, but for every one of them there were 20,000 honorable men and women who served honorably. Again, this is fiction and it shouldn't be interpreted any other way.
Now that we have that straightened out, I'd like to comment on the film. This is not a "war movie" and to label it as such would be unfortunate. It is a story of one man's journey into the heart of darkness (however you may interpret that) and it just happens to be set in Cambodia. Whether or not it makes any sense (I have yet to figure it out), it's still a beautiful picture. The camera angles, lighting, soundtrack...haunting combination. I can honestly say it's one of the few films that I've enjoyed simply for the visual/sonic aspects.
Squeamish, politically concerned (far left or right), children, stay away. Otherwise, you might find this interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Sickening.
Review: I'm absolutely astonished at the popularity that this movie has amassed over the years ...but I guess even "Sorority House Massacre" can gather a cult following. Francis Ford Coppola indulges himself in what is without a doubt the most obscene and lavishly-funded wet dream Hollywood has ever offered. That is, this is no more than a collection of Mr. Coppola's egotistical (and inaccurate!) cinematographic ramblings with no coherent theme other than that of gratuitous gore. And, yes, it's true what another person posted here; Coppola had a live buffalo hacked to pieces from 6 camera angles.I think it's indicative of mediocrity (if not impotence) that a director must resort to mutilating animals in order to impress an audience. He could've just thrown in Pamela Anderson and saved us the nausea.
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Summary: War is regressive
Review: Strangely enough this film is not about the Vietnam War itself, in spite of what it may seem, in spite of the decor. It is about man confronted to war. On one side you have Captain Willard (willing to do what he is ordered to do) of the special forces in Vietnam. He only lives through the actions and missions he gets involved in. When out of action he plainly gets crazy. When in action he is as cool as a cat and then no obstacle can stop him : he is ready to do anything, including killing innocent people, to reach his target, to fulfill his mission. Even his life does not count anymore except that it is necessary to retain it to reach the goal, which makes him prudent. This man becomes a simple thinking machine that does not consider any element that may stand across his road, except as an obstacle to be removed. He uses his intellect to solve his problem, but ethics are beyond him and he even agrees with Colonel Kurtz and yet he fulfills his mission and terminates him. In other words this man is so faithful to the mission he has received that his ethics are suspended, his intellectual positions are pushed aside. Ethics and agreement or disagreement have been entirely delegated to and deposited in his higher-ups. He works on a delegation of perspective. But the real lesson about human nature in war comes with Colonel Kurtz. He did not delegate his ethics or his intellectual powers. He is a pragmatist and he looked at a situation, analyzed it, came to conclusions and implemented the measures that these conclusions entailed without any consideration of wrong or right, good or evil. His only law was to be effective in the war he was in. All means are then made acceptable, even if not palatable, by the concrete effectiveness of them. It is a regression, caused by war of course. War pulls people down and brings them back to some ancient view that says survival and the destruction of enemies are the only goals to be taken into account, once the enemies have been clearly determined. Man in such a situation does not question the goal, the means or the results. He can only make sure the results go the way imposed by the goal. So he comes to the idea that to win a war is to utterly destroy the enemy : drop the Bomb and kill them all. Death then becomes a decor in wartime and to kill becomes a daily tool in this situation. A warrior in such a war becomes a poet of death : he has to invent new ways of killing, as cruel as possible in order to create fear, the only way to impress the enemy and bring them down, though the only road to victory is to annihilate that enemy. The only thing that this Colonel Kurtz, his shortness in a way that his name implies, is that what will come out of such a method is not peace, is not an integratable country, but a pocket of unmanagable dictatorship based on the law of blood, of shedding blood, of feeding blood to the minds of the victors and to the land of the territory. And this regression will not know any end. It will have to go on forever. On the other side, the other method is not better because in such a war, a war of liberation (and both sides are using the word), it is the side that will be crueller that will win. Hence the Americans are defeated both ways : either creating a no man's land of cruelty or being defeated by a higher level of cruelty. That is what a war of that type, what any war produces in any circumstances and conditions. Human nature is a fragile fabric that can be brought back to ancient barbaric stages easily because humanity retains, collectively and individually, all the phases of its history in its present development, ethics, behaviors and actions. It takes nearly nothing to bring back the barbarian to the surface and the only way to retain some sanity is to delegate ethical questions to a higher level and to implement orders without even questioning them. To be a soldier is to be a slave, and like all slaves, soldiers who have initiative will be put to death because they go against the will of their masters. As Jim Morrison sings at the beginning : « All the children are insane ». Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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Summary: Coppola's vision of man's heart of darkness....
Review: Francis Ford Coppola's original 1979 version of Apocalypse Now is a dark, sardonic, surrealistic yet mesmerizing reworking of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. Starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Fredric Forrest, Larry Fishbourne, and Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now trades Conrad's African setting for the then-still largely unexplored (by Hollywood, anyway) jungles of Vietnam. The film's premise is deceptively simple. A hard-bitten, combat-weary Capt. Benjamin Willard (Sheen) is given a difficult (and highly classified) assignment: he is to travel up a long Vietnamese river on a Navy PBR (river patrol boat) to find the jungle outpost of Col. Walter Kurtz (Brando), a highly decorated and intelligent Special Forces officer who has gone "rogue" and utilizing what one senior officer describes as "unsound methods" to fight the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Willard is to locate Kurtz and "terminate (him) with extreme prejudice." In what many viewers of this movie consider the classic centerpiece of Apocalypse Now, Willard and his uneasy Navy companions need the assistance of Lt. Col. Kilgore (Duvall) and his Air Cavalry unit's helicopters to get past a too-shallow part of the river, or else the PBR will run aground. Trouble is, as Kilgore (a "warrior-surfer") points out, "Charlie" controls the mouth of the river. Still, Kilgore agrees to escort Willard and his PBR for two reasons: he loves a good battle, and the location is ideal for surfing. (When one of his soldiers points out that the place is known as "Charlie's Point," Kilgore barks, "Charlie don't surf!") What follows is perhaps the iconic scene no other Vietnam War movie has been able to top: the early morning helicopter assault on Charlie's Point. In a terrifying yet oddly exhilarating sequence, we see Kilgore's Huey armada sweeping in on the seaside village with the morning sun behind them and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blaring from their loudspeakers. It culminates with a devastating air strike on hidden gun positions which have shot down a chopper, prompting Kilgore to utter the hallmark line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning...it smells like victory." Coppola's film then progressively gets darker and more surreal the farther the PBR makes its way upriver for Willlard's rendezvous with the mystery of Kurtz. The deeper the motley group goes into the jungle and the more distant they are from the "world," the weirder things get. And Willard (and the viewer) begins to wonder: what made Kurtz turn his back on the tactics officially endorsed by the Army and the Pentagon? Why was he being sent to kill Kurtz? What made the generals and politicians who ran the war any better than Kurtz? Apocalypse Now is famous for having been difficult to make and for being controversial. When the Pentagon refused to allow Coppola to use its aircraft and equipment, the Oscar-winning (The Godfather Parts I and II) director turned to the Philippine Army, which lent its Hueys and other "toys" to the production. It's also well known that Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack during filming. What is somewhat not widely known is that Apocalypse Now was once a project George Lucas was heavily involved in. As one of Coppola's co-founders of American Zoetrope, Lucas and Coppola's collaborator John (Red Dawn) Milius came up with many of the ideas incorporated into the final film. According to Dale Pollock's 1983 biography "Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas," the concept of the journey to Kurtz via a boat was Lucas'. Lucas had also wanted badly to direct Apocalypse Now, but when the production schedule dragged on and planning for Star Wars got underway, Coppola refused to wait till the science fiction film was finished to begin production of Apocalypse Now. He had set a release date for 1976, the Bicentennial year, and if Lucas went off to direct Star Wars, that date would be set back by a year. He refused to budge, and Lucas went his separate way. As it turned out, production problems, including a typhoon and Sheen's illness, slowed down production anyway and the film was released in 1979. (If you look closely, though, you'll see a visual homage to Coppola's friend and protege: the intelligence officer played by Harrison Ford wears a name tag with the name Lucas on his fatigues jacket.) The original Paramount Widescreen Collection DVD (not to be confused with the more recent Apocalypse Now Redux) is a barebones offering. Its single disc only has English subtitles, English and French audio tracks, the original theatrical trailer, a scene called "Destruction of Kurtz Compound" which has the only bit of director's commentary by Coppola, and excerpts from the original theatrical program.
Rating: 
Summary: *yawn!*
Review: My god, this movie made me want to go to sleep...I sat through it thinking "When is it going to end?" The only good parts I liked involved Robert Duvall and the famous Valkryie scene, and the bits with Marlon Brando and Dennis Hopper. Otherwise, it just dragged itself on forever. The hype and "greatness" I had heard about this movie only lead to a disappointment almost as equal as when I saw "Platoon." The story is based off a story called "Heart of Darkness." Read it. It has the same moral and the same theme, but with a better story.
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Summary: Ten Reasons to Buy Apocalypse Now
Review: 1-Francis Ford Coppola,
At the height of his creative genuis, and with films like The Conversation, Godfather 1& 2 to his credit, he was considered to be one of the few directors/auteurs,one responsible for enriching American Cinema and lifting it to new artistic heights to this day
2-Brando..Brando..Brando..
He was paid millions to appear just for a short time at the end of the movie, and he is worth every single penny/cent and more. Forget his speech in the opening of Godfather, as great and classic as it is, the 'Horror' speech still gives me a chill down my spine, one of the most haunting speeches in cinema history.
3-Vietnam
With Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now is the best film that dealt with the Vietnam war, and how it slowly affected the hearts and minds of some of its soldiers, pushing them into the darkest recesses of the human soul.
4-Scenes
There are many memorable scenes in Apocalypse Now, but few have forever stuck in my mind, the Helicopters attack with Wagner's music playing, and the tiger jumping out of nowhere in the dense jungle, though short was totally unexpected and scary.
5-Actors
Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper, Larry Fishburn,all giving 100% and more for Coppola.
6-Joseph Conrad
John Milius and Coppola adapted Conrad's novel, and though Africa became Vietnam, the spirit of the book was not compromised in any way, one of the very few who devled into the darkness of the human soul.
7-The making of Apocalypse Now, appropriately named 'Heart Of Darkness' is the most interesting making of documentary ever filmed. Done by Coppola's wife Eleanor, it brilliantly manages to be personal yet detached and objective, and captures in intimate details the creative process and the difficulties that it encountered with the heart attack (Martin Sheen), near nervous breakdown (Coppola),and logistic problems (with Phillipines army).
8-DVD
Though short on Extras, it is of excellent quality
9-Music
With a combination of classical and original score, the music expresses and complements perfectly each scene.The soundtrack CD is a must buy too, since it also includes extracts from dialogue (including the 'Horror' speech)
10-Movie Library
If you are serious about starting a movie collection or enhancing your present one, then Apocalypse Now is what a 'movie collection' is meant for, a rich and rare film, the product of a time when directors and actors had personal visions great talent, and the free hand to translate it on screen and share it with cinema lovers worldwide.
Rating:
Summary: The paragon of perfection
Review: Only when a work of art leaves room for ambiguity enabling subjective interpretation, can it really be personalized and only if the creativity of the artist allows you to subtly imbibe his fecund thought, do you get to feel comfortable with it genuinely. If it happens to be a movie, you'd call it a memorable success if you get to identify with one aspect of it. What do you call a movie if it enables you to identify with almost every aspect of it ? let it be the pace, stylization, narration, cinematography, soundtrack, screenplay or action, I think this movie would leave an indelible mark on every open minded viewer's psyche. What can one say specifically about this one ? having seen and imbibed almost every subtle nuance of every character of this movie and closely observed every aspect of it for countless times, wish I culd give it a 5+ rating. A very eerie coincidence was how accurately this movie models what I call "grungy determinism". I guess I can identify with every action of Capt. Willard, and infact behave and think like him personally (even be4 seein this movie). I found the philosophical significance of the boat rowing towards the heart of darkness way beyond the petty battles between nations/ideologies that are represented in this movie. The way Willard had given up on redemption and presented a realistic and disaffected notion toward duty, is philosophically a mile above any of the major protagonists I've ever seen in modern cinema. The soundtrack containing Jim Morrison's "the end" is soo apt and strikes a seemingly foreboding note with the climax. I think life would've been absolutely barren w/out apocalypse now, pushkin's poetry and everclear jello shots ;)
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