Apocalypse Now [1979]

It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story Heart of Darkness onto 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 gun-ships 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 his wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

The story goes: A top US Colonel, played by Marlon Brando, who was "one of us", is now a loose cannon and has disappeared into Cambodia and is committing atrocities with his own loyal private army. A seriously screwed-up and shell-shocked special forces soldier played by Martin Sheen is sent up the river by the US military on a secret mission to assassinate the Colonel. The director had a hellish time making this movie apparently, including going millions over budget (he put some of his own money in), and a lot of trouble with the actors. However what came out of the sometimes improvised filming was a brilliant journey into the heart of darkness, as Sheen travels up the river.

A series of "set pieces" occur during the journey up the river, some of which were removed in the original theatrical cut, and have been returned in the Redux cut. Some of these set pieces have become famous, for example the helicopters swooping in to attack a Vietcong occupied village, playing "Ride of the Valkyries" at full blast. The most satisfying parts of the movie however, are when Sheen reaches the true heart of darkness, the Colonel's camp. What transpires here cannot really be described adequately in words. You have to watch the whole movie to appreciate the end of the journey.

Another aspect of this movie worth mentioning is the soundtrack. It is a product of the times chronicled by the movie, with the Doors and the Rolling Stones included. Actually the first part of the movie is a great chronicle of some of the spirit of 60s.

Things to watch out for: a brief appearance by Harrison Ford, the reading of the "Heart of Darkness"-related TS Eliot poem "Hollow Men" by Marlon Brando, and Sheen's alcohol-induced breakdown scene in his bedroom at the beginning (the actor was not acting at the time!)

Overall, this is great. A spectacular intelligent, beautifully filmed, rock-and-roll, poetic journey, with an ending that will echo in your mind.


Too much and a little disjointed   July 3, 2006
Tim Bentley (Shetland, UK)
29 out of 33 found this review helpful

This is very much a case of more is less. Apocalypse Now is *the* Vietnam movie, the first of the big films openly criticising the war, but in this Redux incarnation the flow is significantly disrupted by the additional scenes spliced into the whole.

The extra footage was probably left out for a reason in that it detracted from the story. For instance Martin Sheen as Capt. Willard exhibited some strong character traits and focus in the original edition but loses that focus in the Redux - trading fuel for the boat crew to 'use' the playboy bunnies? Wouldn't that have jeopardised the mission? Stopping for dinner with the French planatation owner and his staff? I enjoyed him stealing Kilgore's surf board, but it didn't really fit with the story flow either.

All in all, I don't think that this edition adds anything to the movie, in fact I think it weakens the presentation. Coppola purists will enjoy the extended footage, but if you want to see the seminal Vietnam War movie, buy the standard edition.


"Apocalypse Now" (1979)   February 5, 2007
Jake M. Cochrane (Harrold, Bedfordshire)
28 out of 32 found this review helpful

"My film is not a movie; It isn't about Vietnam. It is
Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy, and
the way we made it was very much like the way the
Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the Jungle,
there were too many of us, we had access to not
enough or too much money, too much equipment,
and little by little, we went insane."

So said Francis Ford Coppola at the film's premiere at Cannes in 1979, and no matter what you think about his introduction, whether you agree with him or not, you still have to face the fact that "Apocalypse Now" is a masterpiece in American cinema. I, for one, think it is one of the greatest movie experiences of our time. Coppola begun shooting it in 1975, and within two weeks he fired Harvey Keitel as the film's hero, Benjamin Willard, and hired Martin Sheen. Two years later, Coppola had 200 hours of footage, and edited it into a 150-minute movie.

The film was inspired by Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad about a European named Kurtz who penetrated to the farthest reaches of the Congo and established himself like a god. A boat sets out to find him, and on the journey the narrator gradually loses confidence in orderly civilization; he is oppressed by the great weight of the jungle all around him, a pitiless Darwinian testing ground in which each living thing tries every day not to be eaten.

What is found at the end of the journey is not Kurtz so much as what Kurtz found: that all of our days and ways are a fragile structure perched uneasily atop the hungry jaws of nature that will thoughtlessly devour us. A happy life is a daily reprieve from this knowledge.

I finished reading Conrad's novel a few weeks ago. It was not what I expected. I expected a raw story written profoundly and powerfully. What I got was a haunting tale, driven with madness and paranoia, making it one of the greatest novels I have ever read. After reading the novel, I was in such a mood that I decided to watch "Apocalypse Now" (1979), Coppola's most powerful film, and came to the scene where Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) tells Capt. Willard about "the horror."

Kurtz is a decorated hero, one of the best soldiers in the Army, who has created a jungle sanctuary upriver inside enemy territory, and rules Montagnard tribesmen as his private army. He tells Willard about a day when his Special Forces men inoculated the children of a village against polio: "This old man came running after us and he was crying, he couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms. . . ."

What Kurtz learned is that the Viet Cong were willing to go to greater lengths to win: "Then I realized they were stronger than we. They have the strength, the strength to do that. If I had 10 divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment." This is the "horror" that Kurtz has found, and it threatens to envelop Willard, too.

The whole movie is a journey toward Willard's understanding of how Kurtz, one of the Army's best soldiers, penetrated the reality of war to such a depth that he could not look any longer without madness and despair.

The film has one of the most haunting endings in cinema, a poetic evocation of what Kurtz has discovered, and what we hope not to discover for ourselves. The river journey creates enormous anticipation about Kurtz, and Brando fulfills it. When the film was released in 1979, his casting was criticized and his enormous paycheck of $1 million was much discussed, but it's clear he was the correct choice, not only because of his stature as an icon, but because of his voice, which enters the film from darkness or half-light, repeating the words of T.S. Eliot's despairing "The Hollow Men." That voice sets the final tone of the film. It is that last shot, I think, which really gets me. When Willard has killed Kurtz, he immediately makes his way back "home." It is the shot where Willard's boat leaves the shot that haunts me. We hear Kurtz's final words: "The horror..." and the image of Willard's painted face, after emerging from the water, appears on screen, with the fire and trees we see at the beginning of the movie, accompanied by The Doors.

Another crucial element in the ending is the photojournalist (Dennis Hopper) who has somehow found Kurtz's camp and stayed there, stoned, as a witness. He blathers to Willard that Kurtz is "a poet-warrior in the classic sense" and "we're all his children." In the photographer's spaced-out ravings we hear disconnected snatches of the poetry he must have heard Kurtz reciting: If you can keep your head when all about you . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floor of a silent sea. . . ." The photographer is the guide, the clown, the fool, providing the balance between Willard and Kurtz.

Why has "Apocalypse Now" been so long bedeviled by rumours that Coppola was not happy with this ending? At the film's premiere at Cannes, the confusion began. Coppola originally intended to show the movie as a 70mm roadshow with no credits (they would be printed in a booklet). But the 35mm release would need end titles. After he was finished filming on the huge set of the Kurtz compound, Coppola was required by the Philippine government to destroy it, and he photographed it being blown up. He decided to use this footage over his closing 35mm credits, even though (this is crucial) he did not intend the destruction of the compound as an alternative "ending" to the film. Alas, confusion about the endings spread from Cannes into movie folklore, and most people thought that by "ending" he meant all of the material involving Kurtz. In the 20th anniversary DVD release, Coppola patiently explains all of this once again.

In any event, seen again now, "Apocalypse Now" is more clearly than ever one of the key films of the century. Most films are lucky to contain a single great sequence. "Apocalypse Now" strings together one after another, with the river journey as the connecting link. The best is the helicopter attack on a Vietnam village, led by Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), whose choppers use loudspeakers at top volume to play Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as they swoop down on a yard full of schoolchildren. Duvall won an Oscar nomination for his performance and its unforgettable line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." His emptiness is frightening: A surfing fanatic, he agrees to the attack only to liberate a beach said to offer great waves ("Charlie don't surf").

There is also the sequence where the patrol boat stops a small fishing boat with a family on board. A little girl makes a sudden dash, and the jumpy machine-gunner (a young Laurence Fishburne) opens fire, wiping out the entire family. It turns out the girl was running for her puppy. The mother is not quite dead. The boat chief (Albert Hall) wants to take her for medical treatment. Willard puts a bullet into her; nothing can delay his mission. He and "Chief" are the only two seasoned military men on the boat, trying to do things by the book; later, in a scene with peculiar power, the chief is astonished to be killed by a spear.

For me the most remarkable visuals in the film occur when Chef (Fredric Forrest), one of Willard's crew members, insists on venturing into the forest in search of mangos. Willard can't stop him, so he joins him. The great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro shows them as little human specks at the foot of towering trees, and this is a Joseph Conrad moment, showing how nature dwarfs us.

Also the dazzling opening sequence, when we are introduced Willard. The master shot of that sequence is simply when Willard's hypnotic face fades into the loud fan, spinning wildly above Willard's sweaty body. The fan representing Willard's mind, spinning around and around, ready for the trip he is about to have. The journey to Kurtz.

The rock 'n' roll soundtrack opens and closes with "The End" by the Doors, and includes disc jockeys on transistor radios ("Good morning, Vietnam!"). The music underlines surrealistic moments, as when Lance (Sam Bottoms), one of Willard's crew, water-skis behind the boat. It also shows how the soldiers try to use the music of home, and booze and drugs, to ease their loneliness and apprehension.

Other important films such as "Platoon," "The Deer Hunter," "Full Metal Jacket" and "Hamburger Hill" take their own approaches to Vietnam. But "Apocalypse Now" is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover.


Note: In my original review of "Apocalypse Now" I quoted the French director Francois Truffaut: "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between." Coppola's joy and agony are revealed in "Hearts of Darkness," a 1991 documentary by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper about the making of "Apocalypse Now," with personal footage and journal entries by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, who made secret recordings of Coppola expressing his doubts and discouragement as the project threatened to swamp him.


A cinematic masterpiece... easily Coppola's best.   August 9, 2005
Jonathan James Romley (Dublin, Ireland)
27 out of 30 found this review helpful

More than twenty-five years on since it's initial cinema release, Apocalypse Now still stands as one of the most powerful and hypnotic visionary depictions of the madness of war ever committed to film, with director Francis Ford Coppola using Joseph Conrad's legendary tome Heart of Darkness as the metaphorical backbone to this surreal, episodic and hallucinogenic rumination on man's capacity for tyranny, and his ultimate search for redemption.

The basic crux of the story remains simple, with Coppola drawing on certain elements from the aforementioned Heart of Darkness, as well as various influences from the classic Werner Herzog film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (in which Klaus Kinski's jungle trip mirrors that of the soldiers here) to give weight to his own cinematic ideas, manifested here by the two warring characters of Kurtz and Willard. Unlike the majority of Vietnam related films (like the Dear Hunter, Platoon, Casualties of War and Full Metal Jacket, to name the most obvious) Coppola's film relegates the technical and factual aspects of warfare and the period in which the film is set to the background, in order to more closely examine the relationship between the soldiers (particularly the abovementioned Willard and Kurtz) in this intense and to some extent dreamlike situation.

Coppola's depiction of 'Nam bares no similarity to those films listed above... with his Vietnam becoming a place where surf-mad soldiers bombard villages from helicopters to the piercing strains of Wagner; playboy bunnies entertain the troops in the middle of the jungle; out-posts are attacked at night by unseen mercenaries, whilst monotonous carnival music plays incessantly in the background; whilst the whole climax of the film juxtaposes rock music, arcane philosophy, decapitation and the ritualistic slaughter of a bull.

Coppola's visuals - aided by cinematographer Vitorrio Storaro, production designer Dean Tavourlarus, and editor/sound designer Walter Murch - are powerful and lingering, with the film offering up a number of astounding sequences and set-pieces (as well as some of the standouts listed above, the opening scene - which finds Willard freaking out to the sound of the Doors in a Saigon hotel room, whilst superimposed images of napalm explosions and juxtapositions of ceiling fans and helicopter rotor-blades drift across the screen - is a great way to introduce the sense of madness and escalating atmosphere that will build throughout the film). Much like the aforementioned Aguirre, Apocalypse Now has a great narrative momentum, with Coppola and co-writer John Millius (...though apparently, much of his contributions were scaled down) keeping the film moving forwards, much like the soldiers in the boat, by offering up a strong and enticing mixture of surreal visions, philosophical discussions, and abrasive action.

It's probably the only film to take the idea of "the madness of war" and makes the description a reality, with the filmmakers evoking a Vietnam that is more like a carnival freak-show than something approaching the hyper-real depictions of combat found in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy (Platoon, Born of the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth). Some have, and indeed, still, criticise the final act of the film, in which Martin Sheen's no-nonsense Willard finally comes face-to-face with Marlon Brando's barmy colonel Kurtz, in which the king of method acting turned up over-weight, moody and baring a serious grudge against the director and his co-stars. Regardless of this, I think Brando's performance is exceptional, as great as his portrayals in films like Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris, as he sits hunched over in the shadows, stroking his shaven head and mumbling about T.S. Eliot and the horrors of militaristic genocide.

His appearance in the film is as iconic as the scene with Robert Duvall on the beach, with that oft-quoted line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... smells like... victory" and is as tense and as surreal as any of the film's major (for lack of a better word) action scenes. The hallucinogenic atmosphere established throughout ties in with another Herzog film, Heart of Glass, and would be an influence on the Russian anti-war drama, Come And See, which is probably more important than Coppola's film... though it's certainly less accessible, and a lot more abrasive. Everything about this film is perfectly judged... from the production design, location work, sound design and music (the two are really integrated seamlessly here) and the heavily-colour-tinted cinematography (...getting away from the documentary-like approach of war favoured by many other filmmakers in favour or something more ethereal).

I'm not that familiar with the re-cut "redux" version, released in 2001... being much too attached to this version after years of watching it as a teenage. Also, as someone else pointed out, it's much easier to trust the directorial instincts of the man who just made The Godfather and The Conversation... but not so easy to trust the instincts of the hack that made Jack, and The Rainmaker. Apocalypse Now, in it's original 1979 version, more than stands up as one of the greatest films of the 20th century...blending together the gorgeous, hypnotic transcendence of Storaro's cinematography and Coppola's idiosyncratic take on warfare, with some startling moments of real-horror, philosophy, reflection and character.