Vastly Overrated Droll

Rating: 4/10 (6 January 1999)

"Heart of Darkness", the novel for which this movie was based was no picnic. It was boring and quite uneventful until the very end. The good thing about it was that it was short (the movie is not) Some of the themes in it are good, but the novel itself is very lacking. Apocalypse Now can't really decide what it really is. I saw it at film school, I along with many others was not impressed. It is an action movie at sometimes, then it turns into some sort of half-brained morality pic. Although some of the lines are good (namely Robert Duvall's Napalm Rant) and the cinematography is superb, the movie dabbles in too much other things to get to its point. If one wants to really explore Vietnam in cinema, go see Platoon, for Apocalypse Now is too long to be enjoyable and too corny to be real.