Dark, haunting, disturbing... Coppola's groundbreaking masterpiece about man and war is one of the greatest films ever made.

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2008)

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Number 1 - 1979
Top 4 - 1970s
Top 15 - All Time
"The Horror...The Horror"
"My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam". Coppola's famous comment at the Cannes film festival, pretty much sums up this astonishing masterwork. No other film pushes the boundary so much, no other film is so probing about questions of morality, judgement, war, man and 'good' and 'evil'. After consideration, I do think this is the best Vietnam War film ever made, possibly the best war film ever made and definitely one of the very best films ever made.
It is as poetic and poignant as it is vulgar, violent and unsettling - Apocalypse Now is a cinematic rarity. Only a handful of other films are so impacting on the psyche and soul as this film. This may be the greatest film ever made.
Loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novella 'Heart of Darkness', Coppola extracts the skeleton of the book and adapts it to Vietnam. Starting in 1969 at the height of the war. Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) has returned to Saigon; a seasoned veteran, he is deeply troubled and apparently no longer fit for civilian life. A group of intelligence officers (G. D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford, and Jerry Ziesmer) approach him with a special mission: journey up the Nung River into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz(Marlon Brando), a former member of the United States Army Special Forces.
They state that Kurtz, once considered a model officer and future general, has allegedly gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside the forest in neutral Cambodia. Their claims are supported by very disturbing radio broadcasts and/or recordings made by Kurtz himself. Willard is ordered to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and terminate the Colonel's command "with extreme prejudice." While the storyline of the film is fiction (although the film is based in a very non-fiction war), the heart of the film is as true as it can get. Apocalypse Now is deep and draining, a rare masterpiece indeed.
The fact that this film did not win the 1979 Best Picture Oscar and Coppola was denied an Oscar for his bravura direction is a travesty indeed.
The definitive Vietnam film; breaks boundaries and sets new standards. The film drills into the depths of the soul, while exposing the insane degeneration of humanity in Vietnam - breathtaking cinema.
"This may be the greatest film ever made"
10/10