It'll blow you away (based on the Redux version)!

Rating: 10/10 (12 March 2012)

"Apocalypse Now" is as powerful a war film as you're ever likely to see. The film is basically a mad-house of powerful imagery, sounds, and moody atmosphere - all this is done at the highly capable hands of director Francis Ford Coppola (working from the novella "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad). Coppola is not one of my favorite filmmakers, but "Apocalypse Now" is the one film of his I've always admired and had a deep fondness for. The film works on a base level that seems to appeal to your worst feelings. "Apocalypse Now" is a dark, violent, visually disturbing motion picture. Set during the Vietnam War, the film concerns the covert mission of Captain Benjamin L. Willard (the great Martin Sheen, in my favorite performance of his), a military assassin, to kill the rogue Colonel Kurtz (the late Marlon Brando), who has proclaimed himself god in a heavily fortified fortress located deep in the heart of Vietnam. Willard accompanies a small Army boat crew to take him up a river for him to complete his mission. "Apocalypse Now" is a war film that does not play around in the visually disturbing imagery category, including the graphic combat violence and the (reportedly) live slaughter of a live a water buffalo for a ritualistic sacrifice by Vietnamese villagers. Kurtz's powerful final words signify the meaning of the whole picture - the utter "horror," and the utter insanity of war.
10/10