In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story "Heart of Darkness" into the horrors of the Vietnam War, following a battle-weary Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a secret upriver mission to find and execute the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has reverted to a state of murderous and mystical insanity. The journey is fraught with danger involving wartime action on epic and intimate scales. One measure of the film's awesome visceral impact is the number of sequences, images, and lines of dialogue that have literally burned themselves into our cinematic consciousness, from the Wagnerian strike of helicopter gunships on a Vietnamese village to the brutal murder of stowaways on a peasant sampan and the unflinching fearlessness of the surfing warrior Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who speaks lovingly of "the smell of napalm in the morning." Like Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is the product of genius cast into a pit of hell and emerging, phoenix-like, in triumph. Coppola's obsession (effectively detailed in the riveting documentary Hearts of Darkness, directed by Coppola's wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. --Jeff Shannon
Digitally remastered with 49 minutes of previously unseen footage, Apocalypse Now Redux is the reference standard of Francis Coppola's 1979 epic. A metaphorical hallucination of the Vietnam War, the film was reconstructed by Coppola and editor Walter Murch to enrich themes and clarify the ending. On that basis Redux is a qualified success, more coherent than the original while inviting the same accusations of directorial excess. The restored "French plantation" sequence adds ghostly resonance to the war's absurdity, and Willard's theft of Colonel Kurtz's beloved surfboard adds welcomed humor to the film's nightmarish upriver journey. An encounter with Playboy Playmates seems superfluous compared to the enhanced interplay between Willard and his ill-fated boat crew, but compensation arrives in the hellish Kurtz compound, where Willard's mission--and the performances of Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando--reach even greater heights of insanity, thus validating Redux as the rightful heir to Coppola's triumphantly rampant ambition. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
The Horror... Where could I possible start with this movie. First of all i don't think my head has stopped spinning. Apocalypse Now is an odd movie to say the least and nothing like i have ever seen. It was strange, disturbing, violent, seemingly immoral, and guess what, i loved it. From the very first scene it becomes obvious this isn't your typical war movie. The farther in you go the more it plays out like a psychological horror film. Francis Ford Coppola achieves this style many different ways. Everything from Martin... more info
Stick With the Original Version. First, I'll join with those who are criticising Coppola for not releasing this movie in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio as well as spreading each movie over two discs. Both were staggeringly incompetent decisions and I'll leave it at that. *** I'm starting to get weary when I hear the term "director's cut". Sometimes they're well done like Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner." Other times the director's "original vision" ends up being a weaker film as in when William Friedkin completely screwed up the... more info
Give Me A Break !!! :-( Sorry, but how can this be "complete" when it does not include "Hearts of Darkness" ??? Get a life. Coppola's wife directed it, and he produced it (as far as I know), so where are the rights problems ??? One thing that really annoys me about these 60s-70s directors, who went on about "changing the world", when they were younger, but who are now more money-grabbing than the worst studio system. Hey, I've bought two DVD versions of Apocalypse Now already, how many more do you want me to buy??? Maybe I'll just... more info
If God and Wagner had teamed up to make a film about Vietnam, starring a 400-pound bald Marlon Brando, this is what you'd get Holy smokes. Where to begin. This film is epic. This film is amazing. This film is wild. Nobody makes films like this anymore. Powerful, mind bending, insane. Coppola famously said that this wasn't a film about the Vietnam war, this is the Vietnam war. If you haven't seen this yet, see it. So many classic scenes, so many classic lines, and such a powerful film. Great stuff.
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