- This is the end. My only friend, the end.
- For my money, there is no better cinematic tour of hell than is presented in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It's beautiful, horrible, alluring, and repulsive all at the same time. While the film's most widely cited influence is certainly Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, inspirations as diverse as Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, T.S. Eliot, and Dr. Strangelove hover like apparitions in the fog surrounding the Nung River. At the risk of sabotaging my own review, this is a film that must be seen to be properly evaluated. I should be able to say that about every film, but it's not always true.
- The story is simple: a Vietnam-era special forces team led by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is ordered to navigate the Nung all the way into Cambodia, where they must kill the rogue American military leader, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Assuming that Willard would need to be convinced to kill one of his own, the local military brass (including G. D. Spradlin and Harrison Ford) produce a haunting tape that conveys a few of Kurtz's lunatic philosophical spoutings. Willard gathers his crew, including the naive surfer Johnson (Sam Bottoms), the volatile urbanite "Mr. Clean" (Laurence Fishburne), the displaced "Chef" (Frederic Forrest), and the reliable "Chief" Phillips (Albert Hall), and they head up the river.
- But our unsettling introduction to both the film and Captain Willard, accompanied by the nihilistic music of The Doors and jaw-dropping shots of the jungle exploding into flame, suggests that things won't be quite that simple. As Willard narrates, "There is no way to tell (Kurtz's) story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine." In the removed safety of a Saigon hotel room, Willard comes across as an unhinged man whose world has been turned completely upside-down by the experience of war. As their journey upriver proceeds, the increasing insanity of their surroundings makes Willard stand out less and less. By the film's end, the Captain may be the closest thing left to a rational human being.
- The most famous of their encounters along the river happens early on, when they meet the comically reckless Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), whose claim that "Charlie don't surf" clearly conveys his priorities. Kilgore's best and most widely (and often poorly) imitated moment, however, involves the film's famous helicopter assault to the sounds of Wagner, followed by his comment that he "loves the smell of napalm in the morning." Already Willard begins to look pretty sane by comparison. And all the while, at every stop along the river, the shadow of Kurtz looms over the mission. How does a decorated colonel whose dedication to military service was once beyond reproach transform into a homicidal cult leader? Maybe the whole warring world is mad, and Kurtz has just learned how to fit in.
- It should suffice to say that Brando is one of the few actors of his generation who could sit at the source of that river and not disappoint. Does meeting Kurtz and his deranged acolyte (Dennis Hopper) provide Willard with answers? Well, yes and no. In a film filled with foggy confusion and paradoxes, Kurtz is somehow both worse and better than you might imagine, and the film's final sacrifice is something you'll never forget. In short, Apocalypse Now features some of the best cinematography, settings (filmed in the Philippines), and well-chosen music you'll ever see in a film from the 70's or any other decade. Sure, many of the scenes are excessive, confusing, and overlong (especially in the Redux version of the film), but isn't weird excess part of the point? I can summarize the film no better than by quoting its final lines: "The horror, the horror."
- Cameos by R. Lee Ermey, Scott Glenn, and Coppola himself. Joe Estevez also recorded some of the voiceovers, which makes this his best film by far.
- No animals were harmed in the making of this film, except for that water buffalo which was totally slaughtered alive.
