Apocalypse Now Reviews and Ratings


  • kogrone
    November 23, 2009
    kogrone
    Well done but so depressing, upsetting... I'll never watch it again.
  • 0001hrs
    November 22, 2009
    0001hrs
    The Horror... The Horror. Six stars out of five.
  • rajiv23gooners
    November 21, 2009
    rajiv23gooners
    little bit tiring experience watching this movie (i watched the redux version fyi) until the last 45 minutes came up, which for me is one of the best 45 minutes i had ever spent in watching movie, it's thrilling, haunting, shocking, mind-blowing, absolute classic horrorshow..
  • hamm1365
    November 20, 2009
    hamm1365
    The best movie made by The Godfather Director, Francis Ford Coppola. Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford and the rest of the cast are all amazing. Bizarrie and Disburbing.
  • ythelastman89
    November 20, 2009
    ythelastman89
    An amazing story, a great cast and an excellent depiction of the Vietnam War. It is an extremely well paced movie, even with a large amount of story and a vast assortment of characters. It is done on a large scale, putting you right in the center of the war. Martin Sheen and Marl...( read more)on Brando played great opposites and carried a message of good vs. evil quite well.
  • Arianeta
    November 19, 2009
    Arianeta
    THE END is a song by The Doors. Originally written by Jim Morrison as a simple good-bye song, possibly to a girlfriend.
    Director Martin Scorsese once used the song in a sex scene montage in his early student film Who's That Knocking at My Door (1968).
    The song was also used in...( read more) Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, where it plays while the band explored drugs in the desert.
    The script is based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film set during the Vietnam War.
  • trisarahtops22
    November 16, 2009
    trisarahtops22
    I thought it was a good movie, but it's probably not something I would keep coming back to.
  • lf39
    November 15, 2009
    lf39
    An inner trip to darkest places of the Man's soul.
  • theloneowl
    November 13, 2009
    theloneowl
    Vedi alla voce Platoon, questo poi è il migliore nel suo genere. Immenso.
  • SirGenius
    November 12, 2009
    SirGenius
    As long as it took me to get around to watching this I wasnt disappointed overall.
  • catbox9
    November 11, 2009
    catbox9
    Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now is an epic war film depicting the Vietnam War. The film is very loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. In the film, the protagonist is sent on a secret mission (which does not, nor will it ever, exist) to assassinate...( read more) a fellow American soldier "with extreme prejudice". The colonel to be killed has gone crazy. The majority of the film depicts the protagonist and his crew on a boat going up a river before they finally encounter the colonel.

    While Marlon Brando is the first actor listed in the credits, he didn't have much of a role in this film. Brando plays the colonel to be assassinated but he doesn't even appear in the film until there are about 25 minutes left. Due to his immense weight gain, Brando is never really shown in the film. Most of the time he is on camera he is in heavy shadow and only part of his face is visible. This sort of adds to his character's mystique. Martin Sheen plays the protagonist and he's probably the star of this film.

    While not the most interesting film ever made, this film is nonetheless pretty good. The film does a pretty good job showing how everything becomes more and more insane as the boat travels down the river. In this regard it is similar to Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God. The film, like Heart of Darkness, alludes fairly substantially to Dante's Inferno. The cinematography is pretty good as well.

    This film took a notoriously long time to finally premiere and prior to the premiere it seemed like it would get terrible reviews. This was not the case as the film won the prestigious Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and won two Oscars. Sight and Sound magazine named this film the best film of the last 25 years. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's still a pretty good film.

    83/100
    B-
  • ariel1931
    November 6, 2009
    ariel1931
    Harrison Ford only appears in the early minutes of the movie....but still he is very handsome...
  • etcrevia
    November 4, 2009
    etcrevia
    Not an exploitation film. It is what it is. Marlon Brando's performance: BRILLIANT!!!
  • anospi
    October 31, 2009
    anospi
    This is the best movie ever made. Period. Deep, dark, and more meaningful with each viewing. The 'Redux' version is even better than the original..
  • HateYouIgnorant
    October 27, 2009
    HateYouIgnorant
    Comercial! or stupid! :|
  • scottwot2002
    October 24, 2009
    scottwot2002
    Simply the best. By no means perfect, but the most hypnotic, well crafted and beautifully entertaining movie ever.
  • chiaragilardo1
    October 22, 2009
    chiaragilardo1
    I prefer th REDUX version!!!
  • Viriato
    October 19, 2009
    Viriato
    This movie is far from being simply another war movie. Such a film had never been done before. Trough the madness of Vietnam-war, Coppola offers an overwhelming vision of the most deep and gloomy traces of human soul.
    Apocalypse Now is a remarkable tale of one man seeking for an...( read more)other man, maybe even seeking him self in his deepness. The main stream that passes over this movie is the ambiguity of lucid clearheaded Americans in the search of an insane lunatic man, or maybe on the contrary insane lunatic Americans searching for a clearheaded man.
    This masterpiece shows indeed how deeply a war can injure mankind. All the characters playing this battle seem to be suffering from a general insanity, caused by multiple reasons: the fact of being so far away from home; living so close to blood-insatiable men; being, by the stress of circumstances, forced to kill innocent, unknown people and at least but not least, witnessing the death of comrades and friends.
    Apocalypse Now is a conspicuous movie, since the narration of the facts is so cruel and psicochotic, that allows the spectator to feel the pain, the sorrow and the estranged trauma of those soldiers fighting so far away from home a non-sense war.
    Several scenes are remarkable, some of them I point out: the soldiers surfing while the bombardment; the final scene, in which a slaughter of an ox is shown parallelly to the murder of Colonel Walter Kurtz. However I elect the surfing-bombardment scene as the most wonderful in the film history. The assault to the village having as sound track Wagner's Walkürenritt (The Ride of the Valkyries) is also a masterly, prodigious scene.
    Martin Sheen plays in this film - after my view - the best role of his career; Dennis Hopper has a good interpretation and Robert Duvall plays a phenomenal role as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore. On the contrary, Marlon Brando is not in a good shape, being his interpretation much weaker then others of his career.
    All the aspects of the direction and production of this film are amazing.
    The sound track is magisterial: Absolutely brilliant the choice of The End (Doors) at the very beginning; I can't get no satisfaction (Rolling Stones) during a break of the 'ship's solder crew', and, as already mentioned, Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries during the village assault. (One can imagine that helicopters were invented to fly on Wagner's music).
    How can such a movie loose the Oscar? (That year the Oscar went to Robert Benton's (Kramer vs. Kramer )
    Apocalypse Now is a memorial film, hypnotic, apocalyptic, brilliant...
  • SkywalkerJones
    October 18, 2009
    SkywalkerJones
    I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory.-Kligore
    ...( read more)
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    Director:Francis Ford Coppola
    Cast:Marlon Brando,Martin Sheen,Robert Duvall,Dennis Hopper
    Genre:War
    Year of release:1979
    Running Time:153 minutes

    Plot:
    During the Vietnam War, the young American Captain Willard is given the assignment to hunt down and kill one of his own: Colonel Kurtz, who has apparently gone insane, murdered hundreds of innocent people and constructed a strange kingdom for himself deep in the jungle. Willard and his crew embark on a surreal river journey to find Kurtz, meeting along the way a Lieutenant-Colonel who surfs during live combat, Playboy bunnies dropped in by helicopter to entertain rowdy troops, and the inhabitants of a French plantation trapped in colonial times.

    Review:soon...
  • FilmAddykt
    October 17, 2009
    FilmAddykt
    The original huge review was deleted by mistake so I'll try to replace it with a few words. The ultimate cinematic epic that depict's the limits humanity shown through the Vietnam war and through the sheer will power that made Coppola make it. A sense of mystique and the unknown ...( read more)that will probably never be captured in film again. The terrifying journey tothe depths of hell, most commonly known as human sanity. Not really a war film than a study on humanity. These sentences I think sum up the essence of what this movie is about but still you never know what will be next up the river.
  • ctemple1
    October 12, 2009
    ctemple1
    This movie is brilliant. I watch it once per year, without fail. Intense and absurd, like war and life.
  • theseeress
    October 8, 2009
    theseeress
    it was ok... really weird though
  • jamesm1068
    October 3, 2009
    jamesm1068
    Great movie, a must see!
  • ghmaster1354
    October 2, 2009
    ghmaster1354
    The best war movie of all time.
  • SirPant
    September 30, 2009
    SirPant
    One of the greatest films ever made. Historically one of the trickiest films to shoot, it?s amazing it ever got made! Thank fuck it did though, you know a film is good when after 3 hours you still want more! Credit due to Warner Herzog though, it was his idea and his film was har...( read more)der to make and is ultimately better, but this is still one of the best films ever made!
  • anunholyvoid
    September 25, 2009
    anunholyvoid
    I always watch the so-called classics and wonder why they're rated so highly. I can't help but find them all vastly overrated, including this one. Now, I like the plot but I simply think its far too long for its own good. The same goes to movies like Once Upon A Time In America (...( read more)the first 30 minutes could easily be cut out). I like war movies and this was a change from an all-out action piece. Instead, this opts to portray one man's journey during a turbulent war as the jungle and the man he is sent to kill begin to alter his personality. Instead of being a nemesis to this renegade, he begins to admire him. There are a few similarities with the movie Platoon, which is also decent, but not great. Sheen is, to me, the shining light with his fantastic portrayal of a tired madman, but this is far too slow paced.
  • firstsonxb
    September 23, 2009
    firstsonxb
    pretty good. not the best coppola movie, but still decent.
  • llamaspit3838
    September 21, 2009
    llamaspit3838
    in my opinion the best war movie ever made
  • arabhammerhead
    September 16, 2009
    arabhammerhead
    Epic journey. Suggestive of the Odyssey or the Heart of Darkness.
  • qfwfq78
    September 11, 2009
    qfwfq78
    I have little words for this... Best war movie!
  • ElCochran90
    September 11, 2009
    ElCochran90
    Review coming someday...

    99/100
  • jmankas
    September 9, 2009
    jmankas
    Coppola must have sold his soul to the devil for this.
  • matheuslacerdaf
    September 7, 2009
    matheuslacerdaf
    "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

    "The horror... the horror..."
  • Drakensquar
    September 6, 2009
    Drakensquar
    To all that has come before, Amen.
  • jamins6
    September 5, 2009
    jamins6
    AFTER READING THE LOW-DOWN ON THIS ONE, YEAH I DO WANT TO SEE IT...WANNA WATCH IT WITH ME?? WHAT'S THIS ABOUT??
  • afbuelvasp
    September 3, 2009
    afbuelvasp
    Me gusta la escena con Wagner de fondo, pero Francis, esa la invento Morricone y Valerii en "il mio nome e nessuno"... de todas formas, buena buena
  • finnbhansen
    September 2, 2009
    finnbhansen
    This is THE one
    Best movie ever.
  • SageSlowdive
    August 25, 2009
    SageSlowdive
    Overrated, and boring for the most part.
  • buckeyeszack91
    August 25, 2009
    buckeyeszack91
    Great movie but the ending drags on a bit.
  • filmfanatic2009999
    August 22, 2009
    filmfanatic2009999
    One of the best war films ever made, so effective and powerful, so brilliantly acted and directed.
  • makkom
    August 20, 2009
    makkom
    war, the world of madness, murder, surviving, hope, hopeless, human.
    what people do when the time of "edges of their lives" ?
    it shows everything in a vivid sense and crazy way.
    even we are not living in the edge, all the same we human has same desire.
    this movie tells me some pa...( read more)rt of devils or monster of human nature.
  • HenrikSchunk
    August 18, 2009
    HenrikSchunk
    Apocalypse Now is one of those movies for which I frequently had been confronted with mouths opened wide in astonishment, how come you have not seen it ? Never heard of the phrase: I love the smell of Napalm in the Morning ? Well, now I have, thanks very much.



    In def...( read more)ense of my reputation I must say, I have read the book upon which the movie is based upon years ago (Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness). While the movie follows the book to a large extent, the story is a basic and working formula of a man's journey both into the world as well as into his heart (of darkness).



    The movie is set in Vietnam, instead of the African continent, which works very well and the often cited 'Horrors' are many and illustrous in this movie, rangning from physical violence to mental degeneration.



    A very good and solid cast (except Dennis Hopper, that moron almost ruined the movie with his horrible performance).



    I have never seen a movie whose starpower (concerning Brando) was so evidently woven into the structure. The movie builds up to the climaxing moment when we finally meet the enigmatic man in the middle of darkness, and personally I wanted to meet the character in the story as much as looking forward to the stellar performance (so Ive been told) of the legendary Marlon Brando.



    I was not dissapointed.



    There is an interesting documentary around, called Hearts of Darkness which basically documents the movie's making. It took 16 months (instead of the scheduled 6 weeks) to make, Martin Sheen suffered from a heart attack, Coppolo treated suicide and Brando did not care about his lines.



    An epic masterpiece, highly recommended
  • praetormarching
    August 13, 2009
    praetormarching
    My favorite of all time!
  • andrewt1on1
    August 12, 2009
    andrewt1on1
    Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. In the Vietnam war, Martin Sheen plays a U.S. army captain who is ordered to take a boat down the river into Cambodia and kill an American colonel (Marlon Brando) who has gone insane.

    In some scenes this movie seems very gritty and realistic; ...( read more)in other scenes it is surreal and bizarre! But it is definitely one of a kind. Also starring Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, and a very young Harrison Ford.

    Favourite quote: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
  • rambo360
    August 11, 2009
    rambo360
    THE BEST VIETNAM WAR EVER IT WAS THE BEST FILM THAT I EVER SAW A VITNAM WAR LIKE THIS IT WAS FANTISTIC MARLON BRANDO AND ROBERT DUVALL GIVE Ther best performence ever
  • brocksssssnyder
    August 10, 2009
    brocksssssnyder
    basically genius. i'm just upset that i had to watch the redux, so it took me three work days. geezus.
  • angelaiskool
    August 9, 2009
    angelaiskool
    another one of my all time favs
  • ember22
    August 8, 2009
    ember22
    Well I've seen a few Vietnam movies in my time, and I tend to like them, so having not seen Apocalypse Now, widely regarded as the best of the best when it comes to a nam flick I decided that was something that had to be changed. So I sat down to watch one of the most critically ...( read more)acclaimed movies ever, and 2 hours and 33 minutes later I sat up again, blurry eyed with a headache, trying to work out what the fuck just happened. After a few hours of research I found out what just happened was exactly what I was afraid just happened, and on that note off we set with the hardest and most honest review I've written since Blade Runner:

    The movie was pretty good for most of the way through, some brilliant lines and a real sense of connecting with the character's, not so much Captain Willard but he seemed more like a narrator than central figure, something put in to give the movie a sense of direction and to balance the brilliance of the other characters jiggling around in all their wonderful layers around him. The event's are suitably shocking and morally disturbing and I loved how blunt the movie was being about them, watching a character you quite like gun down a whole family standing two feet away from him because the mother moved a bit too quick and made him jumpy is really emotionally disruptive, really effective, and for quite a while I was getting ready to write the review of the best Vietnam flick I'd ever seen.

    So what made me go meh? Well the ending, the climax, the wishy washy arty fuck up from where I'm standing. I knew something was going a bit skewered around the bow and arrows scene but nothing prepared me for what was to come next. Before I get onto that however I'd like to share with you lovely people what I like about Vietnam flicks, especially since I'm not a massive fan of war movies in general. A great nam flick will have a bunch of characters that seem human, layered figures who you can identify with and grow to like despite their flaws, it will then show these characters see and do continually horrible and in-human things involving other human beings, namely Vietnamese families, communities and Viet Cong fighters. It will then explicitly make the point that they have no idea why they are doing them, why they have to see them, giving that wholly true sense of a whole load of human beings thrown into a cauldron, one side fighting for some obscure and corrupt philosophical stand point that they really don't care about, just trying their best to survive while emotionally and spiritually they get torn up inside by everything they go through to survive, the other fighting the previous because they're destroying their homes, communities, killing their families, everything they've ever known and loved, and what's worse simply for some hazy and corrupt philosophical standpoint that most of the troops neither understand nor care about.

    In Apocalypse Now the ending involves a tribe of renegade soldiers and Cambodians living in some twisted and in-human society while some mad leader drools hazy philosophical standpoints and sticks heads on sticks and bodies on trees, while an idiot journalist runs around calling him a genius. Well done you've made an artsy and obscure metaphor for the entire Vietnam war. Why I don't like it is that everything it says is something I already know, I'd already got that far on my own thanks very much, and it wasn't nearly as effective as say killing every character I care about in a balls tighteningly tense finale and leaving me to contemplate the senseless waste of human life that the Vietnam war was. Artsy is fine, infact I like it, American Beauty, Fight Club, Donnie Darko and Requiem for a Dream to name a few are all artsy movies that I adore, but I adore them not because they're artsy and trippy, but because through being artsy and trippy they said something to me that I hadn't thought of before, or in a way and from an angle I hadn't previously looked at it, they gave me something to take away from the experience. Apocalypse now says nothing to me that I hadn't already worked out for myself, and it says it in a way that was hazy, obscure and ineffective. I can appreciate the attempt to an extent and the rest of the movie is so great I can't bring myself to hate it, but a great movie doesn't have to be artsy. Blunt and brutally honest, cruel to be kind if you like, is just as effective, and in some cases far more effective than artsy can ever be. The Vietnam war and war in general is twisted, in-human and screws with your head when it's portrayed honestly, and it doesn't need to be made any more twisted and in-human for people to understand how twisted and in-human it is.
  • wataki2
    August 7, 2009
    wataki2
    I wanna see this, i just hope it doesn't disappoint me though..
  • phbasketball6
    August 5, 2009
    phbasketball6
    Best war film and the best of 1979. The direction was amazing by Coppola, it's his best work besides The Godfather films. The screenplay was amazing and the ending had a good twist to it. The acting by Sheen, Brando, Duvall, a young Fishburne, Hopper, Forrest, and Glenn was amazi...( read more)ng. This film made Martin Sheen a notable actor, was one of Duvall's best performance and started Fishburne's acting career.

Summary

Apocalypse Now Summary