This is still magnificent filmmaking and story-telling on every level. Apocalypse Now is one of the great films because it is about every war ever fought and at the same time is about much more than men in combat.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 58
Fresh: 57
Rotten:1
Average Rating: 8.6/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 35 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic, loosely based on HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad, tells the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), a special agent sent into Cambodia to assassinate an errant American colonel (Marlon Brando).... Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic, loosely based on HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad, tells the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), a special agent sent into Cambodia to assassinate an errant American colonel (Marlon Brando). Willard is assigned a navy patrol boat operated by Chief (Albert Hall) and three hapless soldiers (Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, and Larry Fishburne). They are escorted on part of their journey by an air cavalry unit led by Lt. Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), a gung-ho commander with a love of Wagner, surfing, and napalm. After witnessing a surreal USO show featuring Playboy playmates and an anarchic battle with the Viet Cong at a bridge, Willard reaches Colonel Kurtz's compound. A crazed photo journalist and Kurtz groupie (Dennis Hopper) welcomes the crew, and Willard begins to question his orders to "terminate the colonel's command." The grueling production and Coppola's insistence on authenticity led to vast budget overruns and physical and emotional breakdowns. Considered to be one of the best war movies of all time, APOCALYPSE NOW features incredible performances and beautifully chaotic visuals that make it an absolute must-see. In August 2001, a new version of the film, title APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX, was released. The new version includes 49 minutes of never-before-seen footage, a Technicolor enhancement, and a six-channel soundtrack. [More]
Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest
Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper, Scott Glenn, Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, Sam Bottoms, Lee Ermey
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Producer: Francis Ford Coppola
Story: Joseph Conrad
Screenwriter: Francis Ford Coppola
Composer: Carmine Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola
DVD Info
Reviews for Apocalypse Now
The score is wonderous, the production design solid and never overdone, and the cinematography is just wow....when it comes to a movie about war this is a real masterpiece.
The movie Francis Ford Coppola never recovered from, and the last word in Ci-Nam-a.
Alternately a brilliant and bizarre film, Francis Coppola's four year 'work in progress' offers the definitive validation to the old saw, 'war is hell.'
His film is timeless because although the setting may change, the wars and the plight of soldiers will remain the same.
...it's wonderful to see this hallucinatory folly-cum-near masterpiece again on the big screen.
I remember leaving the theater feeling shocked, bewildered, confused and, though I was amazed and thrilled by the action, the ending somehow left me unsettled.
One of cinema's finest hours...Brando, in his limited screen time, makes an everlasting impression.
Apocalypse Now did help provide me, and many of my generation, with a vision of what film art could achieve, a vision so magnificent it doomed us to spend much of our subsequent moviegoing lives in a funk.
Coppola's magnum opus remains one of the singular reasons filmmaking was invented.
It is also the perfect device for so many universal stories, mythic and true. The journey is everyman’s road to self-discovery.
...one of the most amazing pieces of celluloid ever produced, capturing not only the ugliness and ridiculousness of Vietnam, but exposing the dark heart of man as well.
It is also occasionally flaccid, incomprehensible and obtuse. Yet, it manages to overcome these flaws to stand as a fascinating study of the nature of evil in man.
Apocalypse Now has a philosophical underpinning that sets it apart from other recent cinematic evaluations of the American involvement in Vietnam.
No film has depicted the fiasco in Southeast Asia in more mythic form than Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
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by: peter stewart 1/17/01
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