Apocalypsenothing happensNow.

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2009)

* Just to get it out of the way: I viewed the Redux version of this film, and that MAY be the cause of some of my negative statements. I cannot say for certain either way.
If you've ever been a member of a message board and you've read the thread about the last movie you watched, you'll know that 99% of the replies have one word or less beside the official score. For a long time, I wondered how that could be. I used to think, "Don't these people have any more of an opinion other than 'good' or 'bad' or 'average'? They just wasted their lives watching a movie; couldn't they say more than just a score?" It took me a few months to figure the entire situation out, but when I did, it made perfect sense. Most movieseven good moviesare so predictable and unoriginaleven if they're enjoyablepeople still lack any real, definitive feelings about them. They see a movie on a Friday night and by Saturday night they forgot they even watched it. As a writer myself, I know first-hand there is nothing worse than an indifferent audience, but it seems that sums up most of the American population. Why? Because of films like Apocalypse Now.
Apocalypse Now opens up with a semi-interesting beginning. It misleads the viewer into thinking that it actually has some physiological depth, then completely drops all depth into the gutter by the 10-minute mark and never picks it up again. Despite what you were lead to believe, there is no plot here. Or let me rephrase that: there is a plot, but it drops it after the 20-minute mark and never picks it up again until the final 30 minutes. Everything between those two points is exactly what you expect for a clichéd war drama . . .
Talking. It almost amuses me that an "epic" movie can have the flattest characters in cinema history, but the screenwriters always have them talk and talk as if they're actually interesting to listen to. In Apocalypse Now's case, the characters are ALL walking stereotypical war clichés with legs andunfortunately tongues. They're all simply nothing but dumb animals created to carry the pointless dialogue out. They talk so much it's downright nauseating. What are they talking about? I forgot, and I just finished the film 10 minutes ago. Their dialogue is all predictable copy/paste war dialogue; I do remember that much. Naked girls, guns, cliché monologues about life/deathall the stuff you've heard thousands of times. I was never a soldier in the Vietnam War, but I can pretty much assure you the real soldiers talked about more than these unimaginative movies give them credit for.
Besides talking, what do you get in Apocalypse Now? Well, there are only two main action scenes in the entire movie, so you can cross balls-to-the-wall war action off your list of expectations. No, this nearly 4-hour long film focuses on shots of boats going down the river with soldiers talking, and not much else. There is no emotional experience here. There is no "horror", as the tagline proclaims. The most "horror" you get is a bunch of PG-rated war scenes and some eerie music as the soldiers move through fog. If the director had focused on the true horror of realistic war, I wouldn't have to be sarcastic when I say: How terrifying! Instead, however, the director focuses things we've seen before. Hundreds of times. He focuses on the copy/paste Hollywood-style war, not the truly gritty, dirty war. He doesn't rub your nose in the true horror of war; he pats you on the back and gives you generic conversation scenes.
My point here: Apocalypse Now is one of the most boring movies even filmed. It's also safe and predictable, adding nothing whatsoever to the overdone war genre. It doesn't leave you thinking, "My God, this is terrible!" It leaves you thinking, "My God, I could have done the laundry with that wasted time . . ."
And that's all. That's all there is to say about this nearly 4-hour long movie. The entire synopsis of every major event from open to close could literally be told in two sentences of text. Sometimes you have to sit back and realize that most award-winning, critically acclaimed, "classic" films are nothing but hollow shells. They boast great acting and cinematography, but they have no story. No soul. No moral. No thrill. No point . . .
This is why I blame films like Apocalypse Now for the indifference people have toward movies. These films are supposedly the best of the best, but at the same time they're completely forgettable to anyone who doesn't try their hardest to find pleasure in boredom in hopes of becoming an all-powerful FILM BUFF on some cheesy website. There is nothing wrong with being intellectual. There is something wrong with being pretentious and internally forcing yourself to love a film just because the critics do. And those are the only people who could give Apocalypse Now a perfect score. Or even a mildly positive score.
0/10