User reviews

I watched a bunch of 80's military movies for the first time. Platoon, Hamburger Hill, and Apocalypse Now. I was surprised at how poorly this movie held up. I care way more about the war itself and the struggles of it's soldiers and their relationships vs some silly unbelievable story. This movie is for casual movie watchers who like stuff like star wars and avatar, eating up genericism and regurgitated plot you've seen a hundred times. Maybe it just hasn't aged well? I think that must be it because the amount of people simping for this trainwreck is deplorable and shameful. Shame on you. Shame.

Disturbingly insane and boring, as it came highly rated, I forced myself to watch it till the end and ended up feeling I wasted 2.5 Hours of my life. Cinematography and lighting may be top notch only if you have the stomach to watch it till the end. there are better movies on war and violence if that's what you like.

Here's one of those movies that receives accolades solely because it deals with a weighty subject and has Pretensions of Profundity.

Is it actually worth watching? I don't believe so. Wish i could get back the time i spent on this lemon of a film. There isn't enough story here to make it a great film and the whole climax is sorely botched. Without writing a spoiler i'll just say that Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz- for whose appearance you wait the entire film for- was a huge letdown.

Although Brando is inarguably one of the greatest actors ever, he was miscast and given vacuous lines to deliver to boot. The movie ends as one big melodramatic farce.

Additionally, the fact that this was a work of director Francis Ford Coppola who directed the inimitable Godfather films does not mean that you should watch this film too. It only means that you should go back and watch the Godfather again (and again). This is shameful compared to those films and it's hard to see any true artist wanting this sham attached to their name.

The only part that was at all enjoyable and made me forget how that the movie was going nowhere, were the parts with Robert Duvall as the macho commander. Very funny stuff.

Overblown, occasionally interesting, but mostly pretentious pastiche of Joseph Conrad's *Heart of Darkness*. The Vietnam conflict serves as the Ultimate Metaphor for Coppola, as he sends discharged Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) up the Mekong Delta. His assignment? Dispatch a certain Colonel Kurtz, a Green Beret who has apparently gone stark raving mad in the jungle of Cambodia. Along the way, Willard meets a middle-aged Robert Duvall who can talk about nothing but surfing (and in a Southern drawl, too), and a small crew of your typical 'Nam grunts that accompany him on his boat ride. The general point of the film seems to be that War is Hell, or that Man is a murderous savage at the very least. Wow, man.

Coppola throws so much at the screen that some of it is bound to stick and hold your attention. The scene where the Hueys glide above the breaking surf with Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries" blaring on rigged-up speakers on the copters is justly famous (though nonsensical and over-the-top). Dennis Hopper in a brief appearance manages to steal the entire movie ("Did you know that 'if' is in the middle of 'life', man?!", etc.). Coppola's setting-afire of an entire jungle with Jim Morrison intoning "This is the end . . ." on the soundtrack is an astonishing sight, though necessarily modified by the knowledge that this film continues to be condemned for creating some of the worst environmental damage in the history of movies. And there's a truly chilling sequence in which Willard stumbles upon a last outpost of GI's engaged in a chaotic, meaningless firefight with an unseen enemy.

But most of the movie is merely the boat ride, accompanied by some truly dreadful faux-noir voice-over narration ("Accusing someone of murder here was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500" . . . you get the idea). Willard mulls over the spectacularly banal history of Colonel Kurtz, while the crew gets on each other's nerves. In the *Redux* version, there's an excruciating detour on a plantation that houses a group of snappily dressed French expatriates, a 30-minute digression that was edited out of the first cut for a very good reason: it's sophomoric. Anyway, on it goes, until Willard finally comes face-to-face with Ultimate Evil . . . which turns out to be just a middle-aged, overweight Marlon Brando, mumbling inaudibly, snacking on what appears to be macadamia nuts, and reading to Willard alternately between old issues of "Time Magazine" and T.S. Eliot's poetry. "It smelled of death in there," narrates Willard, referring to Kurtz' lair, "Of malaria . . . nightmares . . ." but we remain bemusedly unconvinced. Perhaps it smelled simply of macadamia nuts.

Boring, long, just really uninteresting. If you want a Great War film set in Vietnam watch Full Metal Jacket or Platoon. This ain't it.

Genuinely stunned that it's so popular.

Too much preaching, too long, too obvious. Coppola almost wrote the sermon into a thesis.

Expected to see greatness... This was just rough. Such a boring movie with endless boring mumbo jumbo. Now I know where A thin red line got there bs from.

There is no bonding with any of the characters. Most of them where just irritating to me. Therefore it's a mystery to me why this is considered to be one of the all time greats??

I would be a liar if I stated it's all bad. Sure there are some positive things to say about this movie, and some of the acting is really good. It's just that the story isn't that compelling. And without someone to root for it's just not interesting at all.

This movie made me braindead and I was glad it was over. This was my Charlie.

...what this film is trying to tell me. The 3 stars are for one or the other beautiful photograph.

Apocalypse Now was late 60's propaganda presented a decade late. It presents a scenario that existed only in the microcosm and pretends that it represents the macrocosm. The film abounds with technical inaccuracies and improbable dialog. These are faults that it, curiously, shares with its antithesis, The Green Berets. Robert Duval does do an excellent job portraying a character possessed of all of the worst qualities an officer could have. There is absolutely no way anyone could reach the rank of colonel with such a personality. The sadness is that far too many think that those portrayed were typical of the US troops in Vietnam. In actuality such characters were infrequent aberrations. Even a far better Vietnam movie, Platoon, presented the same misconceptions.

In summary, it's a shame that so much time and money was wasted on this movie.

Apocalypse now definitely showed the raw reality of war, but this just isn my choice of movie.

The acting and editing of this movie was amazing, but I personally just don't enjoy these harsh violent movies.

If you are into to learning about wars, this is definitely a good movie to watch.

The redux version .....the horror .... stay away from that horrible cut.... smells like death...... several have gone mad by boredom.... THE HORROR .... THE HORROR