Apocalypse Now (1979)

During the U.S.-Viet Nam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe.

Director:

Francis Ford Coppola

Writers:

John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola,

Stars:

Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall

Top 250 #35 | Won 2 Oscars. Another 17 wins & 30 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Marlon Brando	...	Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
Martin Sheen	...	Captain Benjamin L. Willard
Robert Duvall	...	Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore
Frederic Forrest	...	Jay 'Chef' Hicks
Sam Bottoms	...	Lance B. Johnson
Laurence Fishburne	...	Tyrone 'Clean' Miller (as Larry Fishburne)
Albert Hall	...	Chief Phillips
Harrison Ford	...	Colonel Lucas
Dennis Hopper	...	Photojournalist
G.D. Spradlin	...	General Corman
Jerry Ziesmer	...	Jerry, Civilian
Scott Glenn	...	Lieutenant Richard M. Colby
Bo Byers	...	MP Sergeant #1
James Keane	...	Kilgore's Gunner
Kerry Rossall	...	Mike from San Diego

Storyline

It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz, whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him! Willard, sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore, head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group which eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance and Chef reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost, beyond the Do Lung Bridge. Now, after becoming prisoners of Kurtz, will...

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Plot Keywords:

army | colonel | jungle | vietnam | captain | 

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Taglines:

The Horror. . . The Horror. . .

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Genres:

Drama | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for disturbing violent images, language, sexual content and some drug use

Details

Official Sites:

American Zoetrope

Country:

USA

Language:

English French Vietnamese Khmer

Release Date:

15 August 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier

Filming Locations:

Philippines

Box Office

Budget:

$31,500,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£68,351 (UK) (30 November 2001)

Gross:

£338,493 (UK) (21 December 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Zoetrope Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

153 min 202 min (Redux)

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) Dolby Digital (Redux version) Dolby (35 mm prints) DTS (Redux version)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Although top billed, Marlon Brando does not appear until more than 2.5 hours into the movie (Redux version) and his total appearance time is 15 minutes.

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Goofs

When the helicopter drops the PBR onto the water, the superstructure with the radar mast collapses, but in the next shot the boat is fine.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Willard: [voiceover] Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle.
Willard: When I was home after my first tour, it was worse.
[grabs at flying insect]
Willard: I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay ...

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Crazy Credits

There are four different treatments of the end credits, all four are available in different VHS, laserdisc, DVD and TV prints of the film...... When the film premiered in a limited 70mm format, it had no beginning or end credits, nothing but a one-line Omni Zoetrope copyright notice at the end. Programs were passed out to theater goers in lieu of any credits. When the film went into its wide release its format was 35mm. This version included end credits rolling over surrealistic explosions and burning jungle, showing the Kurtz compound being destroyed. When Coppola heard that people were assuming that the explosions during the end credits of the 35mm version meant that an air strike had been called in on the Kurtz compound (which is not what he wanted audiences to think) he quickly re-edited the 35mm version to have the end credits rolling over a simple black background and a slightly altered musical score. The "Redux" version also has the end credits over a black background but in different screen fonts and including additional "Redux" inserted cast members.

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Connections

Spoofed in Ernest Goes to Camp (1987)

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Soundtracks

"Suzie Q"
By Dale Hawkins, S. J. Lewis, E. Broadwater
Performed by Flash Cadillac
Courtesy of Private Stock Records

User Reviews

The Dark Side of Man

Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" is not a Vietnam War film. Do not confuse it with one. It is set to the back drop of the war, but it is a metaphorical exposition on the deteriorating effects that war has on the human psyche. It is also one of the most audacious films ever made, produced, or even conceived (second to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. To call it a masterpiece would be an understatement of proportions as ambitious as the film's production levels.

Opening with no credits and following a memorable first scene playing to the tune of the Doors "The End" as Martin Sheen's Captain Benjamin L. Willard hallucinates to images of helicopters and napalm, the plot is essentially laid out in the first 15 minutes. Willard's mission is to "terminate... with extreme prejudice" Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has invariably gone AWOL in the far reaches of the Cambodian jungle and, as told by his general, is "out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops." Kurtz is a delusional Colonel now being worshipped by a large group of followers who have dubbed him a god. For Willard, this covert operation seems somewhat more manageable than actual combat, yet, the journey he is about to take will be a personal quest that will challenge the limits of his human behavior.

Teaming up with a small crew, they embark down the vast reaches of the river in a rickety boat. Along the way, Willard educates himself on all things Kurtz. During Sheen's raspy voice over, he details his thoughts on the abundance of material he reads. Kurtz was a highly decorated and respected Green Beret. He was a normal man with a family, until a part of him succumbed to the horrors of human brutality and he led himself down the path that Willard is being led. The descent into the jungle is marked by a mesmerizing aura that echoes the battles being fought not to far away. Eventually the power of the experience weights on the group as drugs and a sort of solitary confinement attacks their senses. But Willard seems unfazed and desensitized in his quest to find Kurtz. As he reads about this mythic figure, he is drawn to the man's power and why he has become what he has become. We know that Willard's slow decay will parallel that of Kurtz's.

Marlon Brando has been revered for decades. His presence: unmatchable. His genius: undeniable. But for those unacquainted with his acting prowess and unaccustomed to his physical nuance, Brando can be perceived, in the eyes of an uncompromising film-goer, as a hack. He is most certainly not. Brando was difficult to work with, hard to interpret and impossible to understand, but his talent for unintelligible rants and unparalleled monologues is irrefutable. The man obviously knew what he was doing even if we didn't. His Colonel Kurtz is a being of limitless delusions and continual profundity.

If the film is any indication of the journeys into hell than Francis Ford Coppola's actual experience with making this masterpiece is a true life account of one man's fanatical struggle to produce a movie. It is reported that during the film's 200 plus day principle photography schedule, Coppola contemplated suicide. The film was not only an undeniable struggle to make; it is a grueling film to watch. Coppola's sweat and blood seep through the pores of the steamy locals and his dedication filters through the orifices of Martin Sheen's haunted soldier Willard.

I can not help but feel a warm sense of nostalgia for this type of film. At the dawn of all that was original and unprecedented, films that challenged as well as stimulated were commonplace. Audacity aside, Apocalypse Now is pure film-making. My respect and admiration for Mr. Coppola is of the highest order. But I shudder at the return to what has become the norm for today's standards for film: a lack of innovation. It is not simply the unoriginality of the world of cinema today; it is the fact that nobody seems to care to tell a story anymore or to tell one with heart. But we still have the great ones like Coppola's masterpiece, a film which bathed in its ability to give us something deeper than that which we could comprehend.

That depth in Apocalypse Now is the step into madness. The killing can disturb. The loss of innocence can unhinge. But it is the damage from within; the countless barrages of images that distress, unnerve and detach us from our everyday world and the memories that plague our deepest thoughts that eventually segregates us from humanity and propels us into the realm of the instinctual, the savage and the animalistic. If the thought of killing does not provide sustenance, the act of killing provides man with its fundamental catharsis.