No other war movies compare

Rating: 10/10 (24 June 2000)

Apocalypse Now is one of the rare treats of the war film genre. Not only does Francis Ford Coppola's dazzling direction realistically portray the atmosphere of Vietnam, but this film above all is very cerebral and profound, qualities that the vast majority of war movies lack. Instead of the constant and often monotonous war action scenes depicted in films like Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now strives to utilize these scenes as a backdrop for the engaging and complex characters that are of much greater importance to the film.
The two most significant characters of the movie are played by Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando. Sheen plays a Vietnam war captain who has been ordered by the military to kill Brando, a former colonel who has strayed from the military's commands and has formed his own band of warriors in Cambodia. Also, Robert Duvall turns in a brilliant performance as an American general in Vietnam who seems oblivious to the effects of the war and more interested in having fun than seriously fighting the war. Besides these main characters, the rest of the film's personas do not critically influence the movie. However, all of them serve to underscore the chaotic and almost insane nature of American involvement in Vietnam, which seems to be the underlying message that Coppola and co-writer John Milius attempt to convey.
Much of the brilliance of this movie can be attributed to its many ironies, such as how the military branded Brando as a lunatic, although it was the military who played a large role in influencing his condition. However, the greatest irony of all in the movie lies in its conclusion. This atmosphere of recklessness is also very important to Sheen's character because it shows him to be a man of contempt for the military's actions and policies in Vietnam but simultaneously a man who is indifferent to them. His persona is still more complex because he in a way wants to stay in Vietnam despite its horrors because he has no one back home who cares for him anymore. But probably the most complicated character is Brando's, as he attributes his ruthlessness to the deception of the military of unfairly judging their enemies as well as themselves in the war.
Apocalypse Now gives an extremely radical perspective of the Vietnam War, but in my opinion, the film comments more on the nature of war in general. It demonstrates how the different conceptions of morality and compassion in a war setting can change the individual that seriously ponders them. Four stars out of four.