Cheap Apocalypse Now (Widescreen Edition) (Video) (Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Apocalypse Now (Widescreen Edition)

Homer without the virtues
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>Although Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS is normally cited as the premier literary inspiration for this landmark Francis Ford Coppola film, the voyage up the river is Homeric in its pacing, its cast of characters, and its staging. It is brilliant filming that takes one quickly past his expectation of seeing a 'war movie' and into the psychedelic mind of Coppola. Astonishingly, this film was released just four years after the last American troops left Vietnam, when the wounds were more than open. They were still bleeding. <
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>APOCALYPSE NOW is a psychodrama as much as it is anything else. The men on the boat that winds its way toward horror are as much battling to maintain their own sanity as they are battling anything recognizable as Charlie, an organized opposition. <
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>It is the Americans who come off looking most insane, so the relief that comes from seeing Martin Willard's Martin Sheen get back in the boat and head towards civilization is almost purely tribal. He's like us. He needs to go home. <
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>But horror is before him as well as left behind in Apocalypse Now, the weird paradise that is hell and must be undone for larger reasons than the 'unsound practices' alleged by those who commissioned the captain's Odyssey. <
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>I waited many years to see this film. It was simply never the moment. <
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>Now, fresh from a much-postponed first viewing, I consider it a fixed reference point for American cinematography *and* for America's long coming to terms with a war that in the end made no sense, even to those sectors of political leadership that had the most invested in it. <
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>The insights into wartime reality that here and there come under the camera's view are a bonus, but they are not this film's focus. It is instead a psychodrama that might possibly have staged its Homeric tale on almost any historical stage raw enough to bring insanity close to the surface. 'The War', as many of us refer non-adjectivally to the Vietnam conflict, serves that purpose well. <
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>It it still arguable that America's involvement there made sense. APOCALYPSE now--like HEART OF DARKNESS--is not about that. It's about what's in a man's heart when civilization's thin veneer momentarily rubs away. That, says Coppola with good lineage ancient and modern, is one thing. Horror.

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Memorable thril ride
Apocalypse now is a good look at the Vietnam war. Characters like Lance Willard Kurtz and Kilgore are memorable. The trip up river is a rollercoaster of emotions. Playing ride of the valkryes during the attack on the village was one of the best uses of classical music since 2001. The dialouge between Kurtz and Willard is the best Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando ever did. This movie is a thriller i recomand it Platooon Born on the 4th of july and Full metal jacket in order to understand the Vietnam war.

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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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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.