What happens if you break the egg.

Rating: 8/10 (30 March 2005)

Apocalypse Now still leaves me with the feeling I've just had a dream that I can't remember. That feeling that something special happened, but I have no idea what. Here are a couple case in points. The air assualt on the VC village, the Playboy Bunny dancers, and the river boats cruising past the downed B-52. I remember the plot, but something about the pacing seemed like it was part indulgence, part burden. Writing this doesn't clear up what I'm thinking. My problem may be that Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness" is a moody work, and the moods in this film seem to have blunted what Vietnam was reported and recorded as for mass consumption. An artificial construct like Apocalypse Now requires more nimble story telling. The character study of Kilgore was great, the surfing inane and perfect. The image of the helicopter carrying the cow in a net doesn't get any weirder, but it was like looking a paint pallet. The story needed to be blended better. It's tough to say how, and maybe Apocalypse Now is a true product of it's time. As developed a film about could be 1979, but still too imersed in the culture of the time to get past itself and on with the story.