"A snail on the edge of a straight razor..."

Rating: 6/10 (9 February 2008)

Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Vietnam, seeing the eccentricities inherent in the horrors of war and also the indescribable visual beauty running rampant through all the ugliness. Martin Sheen plays an Army Captain whose been traumatized by his first duty in Saigon; but, left without a family and haunted by memories of the jungles, he is almost anxious to accept a new mission: track down and kill a renegade Green Beret Colonel, a poetic martinet who has apparently lost his mind, hiding out in the "heart of darkness". Elephantine production quickly gets out of hand, and Sheen seems to struggle with his wobbly, mushy character (he's rudderless throughout, acting mostly with his wide eyes). The locations and the rock music selections are all impeccable, stamping this time and place with a distinctive (and artistic) mark, but Coppola loses his identity somewhere along this unseemly journey. "Apocalypse Now" has the look of genius--genius coming from a salty, veteran filmmaker--but it could be a picture directed by any number of brazen auteurs. Some incredible supporting performances (by Marlon Brando, as well as Robert Duvall, Sam Bottoms, Dennis Hopper--who just evaporates--and Frederic Forrest) give the proceedings some muscle, but it's a wayward and occasionally woebegone film, throwing punches like a boxer in the dark. **1/2 from ****