Rating: 
Summary: The Vietnam War - in summary!
Review: Quite simply this film says "the Vietnam war was totally mad and bad".We travel with some soldiers doing there everyday job (killing), while they try to live like Americans in war zone gone totally mad. Coppola (director) constructs a film which grips you from the opening sequence and takes you through a maze of amazing, blundered, spectacular war scenes that were this brutal conflicts signature. An intense performance by Sheen gives us our path through this maze of a film. He has been given a mission to locate and 'terminate' (assasinate), a renegade American soldier, Col Kurtz (Marlon Brando). There is much to take in (indeed it is a film which may be watched several times without revealing all) and we emerge from it confused, saddened but definitely impressed with the horror that was the apocalypse that shadowed Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: Horror! Horror
Review: I had seen the movie 20 years back, at a much impressionable age. It had haunted me for quite a long time then - it still does. The story recreates an epic mission to the nether world, the one that resides in the heart of every man. Martin Sheen,the special agent, journeys upriver in a gunboat into the backwater of Cambodia to destroy the army renegade, Colonel Kurtz. Kurtz has escaped from the the insanity of the war, only to find himself in deeper crevices of madness and savagery. He has built a community of dumb followers, whose horrible rituals, savagery and petrified emotions shock the audience. In a way Kurtz's world replicates the very heart of darkness that he has run away from. Marlon Brando's cameo has immortalised Kurtz as one of the most memorable cinematic characters of all time. Sheen's mission is full of irony and ambivalence. Although his aim is to eliminate the protagonist of the dark realm, he fails to rid himself from self-doubt, and skepticism about the civilised world. What is more, Sheen harbours a streak of respect for his target, whom he approaches with a sense of awe and uncertainty. Both Brando and Sheen are inward-looking characters, beset by a lot of restlessness. Both show firmness in their actions but are quite confused about their missions in life. Cinematically, Apocalypse Now has very few equals. The scale and intensity of its narration make the movie unforgettable. The surrealistic world of Kurtz's community shocks the viewer with its dangling deadbodies, filth, haunting music and the shades of darkness. Derived from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the movie goes one step further than the original in recreating the murkier side of man. But while Conrad brings his readers back to the 'light' of the civilisation, Coppola deserts his sapped, shell-shocked audience amidst the muck, gore and mystery of the netherworld. As a story played out in the backgound of war, it is bound to have scenes of gut-wrenching violence. For me, however, the most horrifying scene did not emanate from the war: it came in the form of a ritual scrifice of a buffalo by Kurtz's community. It seemed so real and nauseating, as the innocent animal was hacked to pieces. I still have a feeling that it was not an enactment. There is talk of reviving the movie in a bigger, better and more disturbing avatar. New footage will be added, including a rejuvenated 'playboy plamate' scene. Watch out, if these ingredients can help reduce the intensity of darkness.
Rating:
Summary: a great movie, even the ending
Review: Ok...almost everyone agrees the first 2 hours of this movie are amazing. It is not a war movie, it is a movie about a journey (both physical and symbolic) in which one man finds that man's true existence is the heart of darkness. As for the ending...it is certainly unconventional. But it is extremely successful, from the books on Kurtz's table (two precursors to Eliot's "The Waste Land") to the omnipresent orange light (hell??). If you got nothing out of the ending, perhaps you should read Heart of Darkness. If you're still unimpressed, read Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil," for Kurtz is the argument against the Nietzschian superman. A powerful story, in both movie and novella form.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic, but OH, the ruinous ending
Review: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning....it smells like....victory." Undoubtedly one of the most famous war-movie quotes ever from what is undoubtedly a great Vietnam classic. Most others have detailed this movie to a "T", so I'll just inject two points that are prominent in my head. 1) The segment of the film featuring the Air Cav is too awe inspiring for mere words. The bravado of the Lt. Col. in charge and the sounds of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as the choppers dance circles around the measly Viet Cong makes you want to go enlist today. There are a lot of epic war movies out there, and I've seen em' all, but this is hands-down the most goosebumps-of-thrills combat segment to date. 2) The ending sucks. A lot. I was gripped by the movie completely, right up to the point where our hero runs into Col. Kurtz...FINALLY, after an endless an exhaustive journey, the movie trails if in a major letdown of an ending. I never read the book, but SURELY it can't have had this vague and unsatisfying of a finale. But see it anyway! Ride on, 1st Cav!
Rating:
Summary: This movie really deserves a special edition dvd
Review: "Apocalypse Now" is easily one of the most powerful and visually spectacular movies ever made and, to fully appreciate this film, it should definitely be seen in it's widescreen format. The presentation on this DVD is outstanding. I had never seen this movie in the theatres and had only seen the VHS version. Seeing this film widescreen for the first time made me fully realize why DVDs are so superior to VHS tapes. You will not be disappointed with the film's presentation. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the extras on this DVD, which is why I give it only 4 stars instead of 5. The "Destruction of the Kurtz Compound" segment, which is basically the filming of the Kurtz Compound sets being blown up, is an interesting extra. In the commentary track by Francis Ford Coppola that accompanies this segment, he explains how and why the segment was filmed and why it was not used at the end of the film. The only other extras are the original theatrical trailer and excerpts from the original theatrical program (which includes passages from Coppola's film log). And as far as extras go, that's it. I really wish they had included commentary from Coppola for the entire film, or had included the "Hearts of Darkness: A Film-maker's Apocalypse" documentary with this DVD (for those of you who are fans of the film and have not seen this documentary, made by Copolla's wife, you should definitely try to track down a copy of the VHS edition - you will not be disappointed). There are also some deleted scenes mentioned in the documentary (a scene where they stop at a French plantation in particular) that also would have made this DVD even better. But I guess we'll have to wait for a Special Edition to hopefully come along. Or maybe they will release "Hearts of Darkness" separately on DVD. In summary, this is definitely a film to own on DVD, and you will not be disappointed with the widescreen presentation. But the extras are disappointing. I will keep hoping for a special edition with loads of extras to come along.
Rating: 
Summary: Over priced yet lacking in bonuses - typical of Paramount
Review: The movie is undoubtedly a cinematic masterpiece which deserves to be better presented on the dvd format. Fortunately the transfer especially, the visual transfer is excellent. It is amazing when one is reminded that this movie was made in the seventies. However as a release on dvd for the 21st century it leaves much to be desired. There is one "extra" included -- Destruction of the Kurtz compound -- aside from the usual trailers but really that's about it. This is consistent with Paramount Corporation's stingy and miserly tradition of overpriced releases with little or no bonuses. Be assured this film and all their current dvd releases will be rereleased again on DVD once you have spent your harded earned cash on these "diet" versions.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of Sight and Sound
Review: More than 20 years since its release, director Francis Ford Coppola's"Apocalypse Now" endures as one of the all-time great films-- a surreal, mesmerizing journey through the chaos of the VietnamWar. The passion and gamble of Coppola's masterpiece is a rarity intoday's cinema. "Apocalypse Now" remains a textbookexample of accomplished filmmaking with its innovative use ofstereophonic sound, location cinematography andstream-of-consciousness narrative. The casting cannot be faulted:Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest and Dennis Hopperdeliver classic portrayals, while Marlon Brando's iconic, shadowypresence evokes the tortured madness of Col. Kurtz. Coppola's"unfinished" ending has been the subject of much debate, yetthe final images remain haunting and provocative. In years to come,"Apocalypse Now" will be remembered as one of the landmarkfilms of the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: "The horror, the horror!" that this movie is!
Review: The only thing more ridiculous than Apocalypse Now being on the list of AFI's top 100 movies is that abortion of a film, Citizen Cane, being number one. You could sum up the whole movie in an eight-word phrase: a boring, long, pretentious, unoriginal waste of film. Francis Ford Coppola should be infinitely ashamed of this disease of a film. It is one thing to adapt a book to make a movie, but Apocalypse Now plagiarizes from Heart of Darkness and is still unable to come up with a decent plot. Every plot twist is ripped off directly from Conrad's novel. Coppola desperately attempts to make the movie his own by filling the movie with nonsense scenes that add nothing to the movie and waste a lot of time. Can someone explain to me what the scene with the women dancing around then leaving on the helicopter had to do with anything? Or the first scene for that matter? Furthermore, Coppola continues that try to win "the most unoriginal and uninteresting movie of all time" award by shamelessly exploiting the same war stereotypes seen in EVERY movie ever made about Vietnam. The soldiers are smoking dope, the Americans are killing innocent Vietnamese, and the American commanders are goofy and carefree (and like to surf). The acting of Martin Sheen is unconvincing due to his extremely lack of facial expression and Lawrence "Larry" Fisherburne is inane. However, the worst offense of this movie, by far and away, was the acting of Marlon Brando. Brando is still doing that stupid Godfather voice. Someone should have told him Don Corlone was dead. Besides being unintelligible, the shots of Brando's bald head and pantless victims are enough to make me scream "the horror, the horror!" But the cinematography was really good, though.
Rating:
Summary: Dark and somewhat slow-paced, but excellent epic film
Review: I saw this film for the first time on video, and was somewat surprised by its somewhat deliberate pacing and lack of straightforward action. For someone who is not a huge Coppola fan, nor a reader of "Heart of Darkness", I found the movie somewhat difficult to follow. That is not to say that this isn't an excellent film. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is an apparently unattached Airborne soldier who is "waiting - waiting for a mission" and is enlisted to find and "terminate the command" of the renegade Special Forces Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Along the way, we meet a motley crew of a Navy riverboat, including a very young Lawrence Fishburne as a 17-year-old machine-gunner. The plot takes an almost whimsical turn when we meet Lt. Col Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who is an Air Cavalry commander, and plays the immortal "Flight of the Valkyries" while systematically laying waste to a North Vietnamese village. While the fighting is still going on, he orders a couple of his soldiers to either "surf or fight", being that he is a huge fan of surfing. It is from Duvall's character that we get the immortal line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like --- it smells like victory!" After this scene, Sheen and his crew of Navymen proceed further upriver, until they reach the last American outpost on the river. The outpost is under apparent heavy attack, and there are no officers to be found. This scene, which makes no sense in the context of a typical war movie, makes perfect sense in this film. The leaderless American soldiers seem to move about in a haze, apparently oblivious to anything outside their immediate surroundings, particularly the grenadier, who is either at far beyond the point of psychological exhaustion, or heavily drugged. Copolla never makes either clear, but rather leaves that to the imagination of the viewer. When Sheen and his crew get further upriver, the plot takes stranger and stranger turns - the crew is attacked by an unseen enemy, in which Clean (Fishburne) is killed, and shortly thereafter, the boat's chief is killed in an attack by natives hurling, of all things, spears at the Americans! However, the strangest part of the movie is the last half-hour or so. Sheen reaches his objective, but Col. Kurtz is heavily guarded by native warriors toting modern weaponry. There are bodies everywhere - hanging from trees, floating in the river, laying sprawled about on the ground. It is truly horrific, and speaks to the level of insanity to which Col. Kurtz has descended, but it also begs the question - "How could all those people stand being around all those rotting corpses?" In the climax, Sheen sneaks past Kurtz' guards, and hacks the colonel to death. As he lay dying, Kurtz whispers, "The horror - the horror..." All in all, an extremely powerful and moving film, although rather slow-paced.
Rating: 
Summary: uh? Was this the same movie I saw the first time?
Review: Ah yes, Apocalypse Now. AFI recently put this film on the 100 greatest films of all time. So, naturally, I decided to rent it and sit down for a night of filmmaking at it's best... Well, the first time I saw it, I fell asleep at the climax... Not to say that I didn't try again, so I rented it a second time and saw it earlier in the day, hoping to stay awake. And well, I dozed off a bit near the end... (Are we sensing a pattern here?) So finally, determined to stay awake, I bought the film with cinematic viewing purposes in mind. I myself am a very big movie fan, and have seen everything from Citizen Kane to Re-Animator. So, I bought it and I sat down one morning, fully rested and relaxed, had a cup of coffee, and tried a third time to comprehend the story... Well you know what? I stayed awake this time. Big surprise! And I payed attenention to the entire movie! And I even took notes. So what do you think this film fan (favorite movie, just in case you want to know, is the German remake of Nosferatu by Werner Herzog) thought of this acclaimed film... Well, it was very well made. The battle scenes are above average and the story was quite compelling. The whole idea of going into the heart of darkness was quite fascinating and the acting was over the top... So what's the big deal? The ending. Simply put, it's dragged out, pointless, and out of place. In a word- the "Anti-Climax". It seems as if Coppola wanted to stay true to Joseph Conrad's novella, which at the very least wasn't so dragged out, and decided to take it to the nth degree. Oh of course the atmosphere is rich, the images are potent and striking, and some scenes (especially the bridge) give the film a somewhat surrealist charm. But in the end, is it really worth it for a film to drag itself out that long at the end, challenging the viewers to stay awake to the endlessly slow finale? Many people will probably praise this film, calling it a mastery of war filmmaking. Or maybe a brutal vision into hell. Or here is a better one... A shocking portrait of man's insanity. Well you know what... those are just words... much like the end of Apocalypse Now. It's all talk and no action. Just to see if my first thoughts of the ending of the film (after I saw it three times to be sure) were accurate, I decided to watch the ending again. I saw it about three times, and then proceeded to throw that piece of trash tape in the garbage. And yes, although it made more sense the second time around, it was still slow and pointless. The film seems like it tried to say something, make a statement, and take the viewers off guard. Well it took me off guard... it absolutely ruined a pretty good film. I'm not sure if you agree with me on this, this review will probably get 0 for 58 found this helpful... I don't really care. It doesn't matter if you don't outright agree with me... because I'm sure that someone out there finally realises that this film is the most overrated piece of garbage out there. Which brings me to my question... Was this the same movie I saw the first time? No, that movie was much better since I slept through the ending...
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