Far out of reach for any filmmaker today.

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2009)

There are quite a few good movies out in circulation today, many of which have been released in the past five years. None, however, can claim the title of most ambitious film of all time. For that title must go to Apocalypse Now, the classic yet surreal tale of US forces in Vietnam experiencing more than their share of problems and violence amongst the jungles and wilderness.
What does one say about a film like this? It certainly isn't easy to criticize, mostly because you don't really watch it so much as experience it. Every scene builds tension and emotion as you watch these young American boys, innocent when arriving, be turned into robotic killers with an almost complete lack of remorse or emotion. Coppola is able to keep our attention and at the same time somehow get us to sympathize but also be stunned at the severity of the action taking place. Each scene is so layered, so complex with what it is trying to evoke that it makes the viewing experience a mind-blowing journey very much like Willard's journey to Kurtz.
The success of this film is in no small thanks to the acting, with the classic lineup delivering on the nose the exact tone of monotonous and deplored sense of bewilderment. Of course, it is Marlon Brando who is the show-stopper as Kurtz, the crazed colonel running his own version of the war in the heart of the jungle. As we follow Willard (Martin Sheen) to find Kurtz, we realize perhaps he is not as crazy as first portrayed. After witnessing Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall in perhaps his best work ever) and the insane chaos that is the Do Nung Bridge, could it be possible that Kurtz isn't as bad as they say? This, of course, is part of the journey and something the audience itself needs to figure out.
All the same, Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest of all films because it goes farther than any of its kind. The helicopter scene when Kilgore's cavalry attack a Vietnamese village is perhaps the most daring and ambitious sequence ever filmed. No film maker or even studio would dare do such a thing, probably instead using CGI to create the effects. But Coppola was a genius and just crazy enough to be able to try such a stunt. Indeed, the whole movie is a crazy stunt and one that you won't soon forget.