The best Vietnam War movie ever.

Rating: 10/10 (15 November 2005)

From the opening scene - with "The End" playing while helicopters are attacking a village - to Col. Kilgore's (Robert Duvall) admiration of napalm, to the Playboy bunnies, to the final scene, "Apocalypse Now" always hits you like a brick in the face. As Capt. Benjamin L. Willard, searching for renegade Col. Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), Martin Sheen has what was probably the best role of his career.
Above all, the movie is staunchly anti-war, even more so than "The Deer Hunter"; "Apocalypse Now" condemns the fact that we were in Vietnam to begin with. The Playboy bunny scene not only shows that the GIs were shown the most despicable stuff for entertainment, but it shows that if you expect to create such emotions, don't expect to be able to control them (in that scene, you can see Vietnamese people outside the compound, and you can only imagine how disgusted they must be at American "entertainment").
Col. Kilgore is of course the ultimate rah-rah military type. Among other things, this "patriot" ignores a wounded man, preferring instead to go surfing. He doesn't even flinch when there's an explosion. As he cynically notes: "Charlie don't surf." All in all, "Apocalypse Now" is one of the greatest movies ever made. With top notch performances by the stars and great support from Frederic Forrest, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Sam Bottoms and Harrison Ford, this is one movie that everyone should see.