Posted on 08/15/2019 1:45:21 PM PDT by Texan4Life
Francis Ford Coppola’s stunning vision of “The Heart of Darkness” in all of us remains a classic and compelling Vietnam War epic. Martin Sheen stars as Army Captain Willard, a troubled man sent on a dangerous and mesmerizing odyssey into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade American colonel named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has succumbed to the horrors of war and barricaded himself in a remote outpost.
The IMAX release of Apocalypse Now Final Cut will be digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. The crystal-clear images, coupled with IMAX's customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio, create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the movie.
(Excerpt) Read more at imax.com ...
LOL, if there was ONE reason to watch that movie, it would be Robert Duvall!!!
One of my favorites, if not my favorite actor. I just re-watched “Lonesome Dove”, and “Open Range” is another of my favorites!
“Peckers in the dirt!”
Thank John Milius for all those great lines. Last real man who wrote AMD directed real films for and about real men!
What’s most bizarre about it is all the references to the work of T.S. Eliot; The Hollow Men, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufroc, etc. Hopper’s jabbering “I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
One of the props you can only make out on the big sreen or the BluRay version is a book on Col. Kurt’z bookcase titled “The Golden Bough” by James Frazier. In it Frazier opines that all pre-Christian religions were fertility cults in which it was customary to periodically sacrifice a sacred king at harvest time so he might be reincarnated in the spring.
In “The Waste Land,” Eliot credits The Golden Bough as inspiration for much of his work. And this allegorically is why the dirty deed had to be done by Capt. Willard and not by some facesless arclight strike. Willard had to spill Kurz’s blood as a form of sacrifice, just like the water buffalo the natives were killing.
Also bizarre how appropriate Morrison’s Oedipean opus “The End” is to the storyline. Appropriate background music to Willard going up the snakey river to kill his symbolic father.
The framework of the film might have come from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness but the individual scenes — like the stoner GI called “Roach” who blasts the VC in the wire with his M79 “bloop” gun, aiming only by the sound of their voices in the darkness — are vignettes lifted from Michael Herr’s “Dispatches,” supposedly true stories he wrote while a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine in Vietnam.
A seriously weird and seriously complex film, even without all the drama that went on during its filming.
A very patriotic film.I loved it.
My favorite too, despite the lefty tilt.
If you like Robert Duvall and haven’t seen THX 1138, I would highly recommend checking it out. Also has a great performance by Donald Pleasance.
Duvall had a small part in Slingblade, and a small part in which he is nearly unrecognizable in The Road, one of the darkest movies ever but excellent.
Almost as overrated as the book from which it was plagiarized.
It was also the 1st Hollywood movie to depict all US soldiers as bloodthirsty rapist thugs.
Yet, many of its fans don't admit to it being antiwar tripe. A war movie with no hero. Nothing but mentally unbalanced antagonists.
The best scene ever put into a movie is the Helicopter attack with Wagner playing. Pure genius.
Step dad was a 173rd soldier that hated this film...
Could never figure out why...
YEP!
The Apostle was maybe his best acting role ever.
Interesting the John Wayne movie “The Green Beret’s” is mentioned in this Apocalypse Now thread, as there is a rather loose connection.
The connection has to do with the Green Beret Affair which was an internationally known event that took place in 1969 when the CIA ordered the Nha Trang Special Forces to kill a Vietnamese traitor. In this order, the term “Terminate with extreme prejudice” was supposedly actually used. The Apocalypse now movie used that term, as well as the Nha Trang location for CPT Willard to receive his instructions.
General Abrams wanted to prosecute the SF soldiers but couldn’t due to lack of evidence. Of interest here is General Abrams’ dislike for the movie the “The Green Beret’s” as well as the song “Ballad of The Green Berets” by SSG Barry Sadler. The General disliked anything that glorified special troops.
A rather vague description of the Green Beret Affair events is found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_GAMMA
And I just happened to be in Nha Trang when this all happened.
The scene of Sheen having a break down in the Saigon
hotel room was one of the best pieces of acting in
the whole movie.
Interesting.
And I just happened to be in Nha Trang when this all happened.
Thank you for your service.
That was an interesting movie...kind of depressing, as I recall, but...he makes anything he acts in look good!
The first half of that flick is OK. The second half is drek and not worth sitting through.
“Someday this war’s gonna end.”
That’s awfully lame to be ‘key.’
“Who’s in command here?”
“Ain’t you?”
Love that line.
Outside Lonesome Dove, my favorite Duvall
character is The Great Santini.
He does a good General Lee in “Gods & Generals” far better then Martin Sheen in “Gettysburg”.
I agree. That scene is a standout in a movie full of great scenes.
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