Starts off well enough and then slowly decays into nothing

Rating: 4/10 (4 September 2014)

After years of hearing how great this movie is, all I can say is that i am beyond disappointed. Initially it seemed like I was going to love the film. Everything just looked and sounded perfect. Then, the film seemed to get lost within itself. In fact, there's a specific point in the movie where you can see it start to fall apart and then just get worse and worse.
Everything up to and including the scenes with Robert Duvall was interesting and almost gripping, then the movie just starts to slowly descend into pointless garbage. How the hell the movie gets as lost as it does I have no idea. It should have worked, everything was there to make it work...everything except the vision to keep it together I guess. Much of this movie leaves you feeling like your stuck in a bad trip or like your high and spacing out.
Maybe you need to be high to make sense of this film but all I can say is that there are much better films about the Vietnam era than this one. Would I recommend this movie? No. Not at all. Watch Deer Hunter (1978) or Platoon (1986). Both are far better films with solid story lines that rip you apart the way a movie like this should. Apocalypse now is just a mess that's not at all worth wasting your time on. If I have anything good to say about this movie it's that at least the acting is solid, the directing is good and the cinematography is excellent.
The problem is the story is a lost cause and the ending anti-climactic. Much of the movie is just a confused distorted mess full of scenes that serve no purpose and manage to go nowhere. To be honest, about half the film could have been left on the cutting room floor and the movie would have been better as a result. What else can I say except to end where I started. I am so incredibly disappointed with this movie.