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Apocalypse Now & All the way through
by TonyM (movies profile)
Feb 24, 2008
1
of
1 people found this review helpful
This is one of those rarest of rarities an epic film which is brilliant; (I also include the documentary Coppola wife made which in it's way is just as good). The film is based loosely on Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" book;but is moved to the Vietnam War ( well Cambodia actually). Sheen is subtle in his role as the bored assassin going up the river to confront Kurtz (Brando), the more Willard (Sheen) discovers about Kurtz he starts to suspect something else is at play.; Brando only has about 10 minutes in the whole film & is shot in the dark because in the book the Kurtz character is supposed to be rake thin, whereas Brando's really overweight; this may only have 10 minutes of Brando but it is the last great appearance he made on screen. The rest of the cast (Larry Fishbourne, Duvall "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning, it smells like .....victory".
There is also room for Harrison Ford (Luckily the part was so small he didn't have enough screen time to ruin the film). I have noticed it falling down the top 100 films of all time lists, I reckon this is down to a younger generation going out and buying the Re-Dux version, a bad mistake in my time. As Kurtz says "The Horror, the horror". The film follows Sheen Captain Willard (Special Ops) traveling up a river that snakes through the jungle to Kurtz (Who is played well by Brando, even though it is short, it's not just thrown in ad-hoc). Kurtz's charter plats a colonel who has realized the insanity of war but has drove himself insane (So his superiors think) in the process.The scenery was brilliantly shot the cinematographer (With probably a lot of input from Coppola himself) and the addition of the Hopper as a Coked out of his head photo journalist (Playing himself again). And I like the use of the music Wagner? when the helicopters attack. Its an anti-war film with more than an anti-war message, a classic. I wish they re-release the original & get the crappy plantations scenes out. The original is a must for any film fan, the Re-dux version is dragging a classic down to a mediocre film. |
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