Apocalypse Now (1979)

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 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-