Apocalypse Now

Green's Review:

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning" -Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore

That quote represents the highlight of the movie for me. That and the fact that one of my favorite actors, Harrison Ford, was in the first 20 minutes of the film, brief as his part was.

This movie has done one thing for me: It has confirmed my lack of interest in this era in American history and films of this genre. You may consider this film an American classic but I sure don't. This has to be the slowest, dumbest, most idiotic waste of three hours I've ever had the non-pleasure of sleeping through.

After suffering through the first disc, the highlights of which I noted above, plus the brief gratuitous female breast scenes, I soundly slept through half of the second disc before calling it quits. No wonder why I procrastinated for as long as I did in viewing this film.

I'd almost rather be strapped to a dentist's chair having my teeth yanked out one by one without Novocaine than to suffer through this film again. And to think I put on the Redux version. Forty-nine additional minutes of agony. What kind of fool am I?

Don't misunderstand me, I think that the ensemble cast is filled with great actors whose overall work I like and respect. I mean how can you go wrong with such a cast as this? Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper..... I'll tell you - put them in a movie with Vietnam as the setting and call it Apocalypse Now.

This movie gets five out of five z-z-z-z-z's from me and

* out of *****

Scribe's Review:

I don't know how anyone can fall asleep during one of the noisiest films ever made, but I digress. Apocalypse Now is only a film about Vietnam in that the war is used as a metaphor for the darkest places within the human soul.

Analytical people will view this movie as a loosely strung together collection of oddities that coalesce into a bizarre and surreal climax that isn't really a climax at all. To some extent, they are correct. But what they fail to see is the inner turmoil being portrayed on the screen.

From Martin Sheen's tortured assassin who can't do anything but kill to Marlon Brando's rebel colonel whose disgust with the new warfare causes him to become a crazed change agent, this film is about what is actually inside all of us. It provides an unflinching look at the heart at its darkest and it never lets up even for a moment.

What else can I say about this misunderstood masterpiece that has not already been said?

***** out of *****