Martin Sheen stars as special forces officer
Captain Willard, a disenchanted and troubled
army vet who is tasked with heading far down
river into the Cambodian jungle to find Colonel
Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando - a special
forces officer himself who is feared to have
gone rouge.
A movie with a tremendous reputation, Brando
showed up on set late, unprepared, and drastically
overweight; Sheen himself suffered a heart
attack and had to be replaced by his brother
for some long-shots, and Coppola struggled
for years to edit the film, after shooting
over 200 hours of footage for the three-hour
movie.
"Apocalypse Now" is as epic as it is iconic
- the film opens without any titles or credits
of any kind to an impressively focus montage
of Willard's face superimposed over images
and unearthly sound of slow motion helicopters
bombing a tree-line in Vietnam... with the
sounds of The Doors' "The End" echoing ominously
in the background.
Visually speaking, this film is beyond astounding...
every frame is meticulously framed, focused,
and lit - beautifully capturing all of the
beauty and horror of a real war-zone.
It's no surprise then, that of it's eight
Oscar nominations - the two it took home were
for Sound and Cinematography.
Scene-to-scene, this film is engaging, thought-provoking,
disturbing, and yet, it remains entertaining.
An early, and now famous scene in the movie
features Robert Duvall as Colonel Kilgore
and his fleet of helicopters launches an attack
on a Vietnam held beach, blasting the sounds
of Richard Wagner's "Ride Of The Valkyries"
as the bombs drop on the small village.
The imagery is impressive and well-executed,
unfortunately though, when these individual
scenes are glued together into a 202-minute
film, they lose their effectiveness.
The all-star cast also features appearances
by Harrison Ford, Lawrence Fishburne, and
Dennis Hopper - only further solidifying that
this movie's parts are indeed greater than
it's sum.
There are a number of sequences that, although
fascinating, linger on for much to long, and
fail to forward the plot in any capacity.
When the final act finally does arrive, the
characters that we're left with are so beat-down
and apathetic about their situation, it is
difficult to really empathize with their position
or motives.
Coppola takes us from an inspiring high to
a delusional self-serving low where the movie
just drags on with slow-paced scenes of character
babble that are beyond boring.
There is certainly something to be said about
a director who sticks to his artist vision
without trepidation, but in this instance,
it only serves to ruin a masterpiece of war-inspired
cinema.
"Apocalypse Now", "Impressively epic, but
dreadfully pompous."
- Well, those were my thoughts on the film,
now let's see what you had to say about it
in the YouTube comments.
Here's the rate-o-matic now to show us how
we scored, "Apocalypse Now"... a COOL and
an AWESOME.
I really appreciate this film for what it
was attempting to accomplish, but that isn't
an excuse for it's bloated egotistical scenes
towards the end that really hurt this movie's
effectiveness.
I had to score it a seven.
While some of you agreed with me regarding
the film's slow pace, many were able to overlook
that, praising the film for it's visual style,
and iconic imagery of the Vietnam war, scoring
it a nine.
