Apocalypse Now dvd movie.|
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List Price: $29.98 Features • Anamorphic • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 15 August, 1979 DVD Release : 15 August, 1979 |
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Apocalypse Now description In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story "Heart of Darkness" into 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 gunships 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 Coppola's wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. --Jeff Shannon |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | The horror ... the horror ... |
| To call Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW one of the greatest films ever made is a major understatement. It's filmmaking perfection - brilliant, powerful, and beautiful. From the chilling opening - helicopters flying through the Vietnamese jungle, setting it aflame, while The Doors' "The End" plays - to the now-classic closing ("The horror ... the horror ..."), it's an unforgettable journey into the darkest reaches of the human heart. It's unquestionably the greatest and most horrifying film made about the Vietnam War; it may be the best war movie ever. Some could even argue that APOCALYPSE NOW is the greatest film of all time.
The plot is ingenious. During the seemingly endless Vietnam War, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), a former CIA agent, is given a voluntary mission; as he's been searching for work, he gladly accepts. His mission: float up the Nung River in a Navy boat and terminate (with extreme prejudice) Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-brilliant man who has gone insane and set himself up as a God and the leader of a Vietnamese tribe. As Willard sails further and further up the river, his surroundings and the violence become more and more terrible until he finally reaches the heart of darkness. Though APOCALYPSE NOW was, in fact, loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel HEART OF DARKNESS, it is truly Francis Ford Coppola's movie. The story behind the film is legendary; it was turned into an equally-legendary documentary entitled HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE. From the start the film was plagued by production problems, to the point where Coppola threatened to commit suicide six or seven times. Marlon Brando showed up on the set without having read Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS or the Coppola/John Milius screenplay, demanding a large sum of money, and severely overweight. Filming ran for an incredible 16 months, and editing lasted for roughly two years. Paramount Pictures nicknamed the film "Apocalypse When?". Audiences, critics, studios, and Coppola himself thought that the film would wind up as a disaster, a horrible film that would signal the end of everyone involved. Needless to say, they were horribly wrong. The film is a masterpiece. More than a film, it's a reflection on humanity and the evil within. Never has the Vietnam War looked so horrifyingly inhumane. Coppola really makes the point that Vietnam was not so much a war as it was a massacre. The most terrifying scene of all involves the slaying of a group of innocent Vietnamese fishermen. Soldier Chef (Frederic Forrest) reluctantly searches the boat for any weapons; the tension is built up while Chef searches as his commander shouts at him and he shouts back furiously. A Vietnamese woman suddenly runs towards him shouting, and a young American soldier (14-year-old Laurence Fishburne) guns down not only her, but every one else on the boat. As it turns out, the woman was running for her dog. All those innocent human beings were murdered because the woman wanted to protect her puppy. And it gets worse - Chef points out that the woman is still alive. As he begins hauling her on the ship, Willard walks over and shoots her in the heart. "I told you not to stop the damn ship," he says. As far as filmmaking goes, APOCALYPSE NOW is perfection. There's excellent acting from all involved; Robert Duvall is especially great as an eccentric commander who likes to surf and, in one of the most memorable scenes in cinema history, blasts Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries" while attacking enemy villages. A skinny, bespectacled Harrison Ford has a brief appearance, and Dennis Hopper - in another wonderful role, this time as a photojournalist - pops up toward the end. The score is fittingly eerie and mechanical, a synthesized horror composed by Coppola and his father, Carmine Coppola. Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is nothing short of spectacular. APOCALYPSE NOW also features what may be the greatest lighting in film history, particularly toward the end of the film. Still, despite all this cinematic greatness, APOCALYPSE NOW is more an experience than a film. It's a chilling, brilliant voyage from start to finish. "Never get off the boat," a character states at one point in the film. For we, the audience, APOCALYPSE NOW is the boat, and once we do take the inevitable step off, we will never be the same. |
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