One of a handful of truly great war movies

Rating: 10/10 (9 October 2019)

Let's get one thing out of the way before we move on. Apocalypse Now is not an accurate war movie, in a sense that it does not portray the real nuts and bolts of how a war is run. But it's arguably the most groundbreaking. No other war movie has portrayed the dualities of human nature, the absurdities of war and the psychological toll it exerts on the soldiers who fight it, more boldly than Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece. And none are as visually and thematically haunting. The performances by Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall are outstanding. The cinematography is breathtaking and the action scenes are some of the best staged and most memorable in cinema history. An audacious, evocative and gripping motion picture. Coppola is better known for the Godfather but in my opinion, this is his most important work.