Apocalypse Now (1979 film)

Category: War drama/book-to-movie adaptation

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

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In keeping with the military theme around ANZAC Day, given my last review was for The Water Diviner, I'll now review another military-themed movie, but this time a little more dark and serious...

I watched Apocalypse Now for the first time back when I was in high school and was tasked to write a report about it. There wasn't much compunction about letting the older kids/young adults studying a quite mature film since it was final year, and it was either this, or To Kill A Mockingbird. And goddammit, I wanted some action! Little did I know all those years ago that I was actually writing a book report by-proxy, the book in question being Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad about a man who travels up a river on behalf of an ivory trading company in Belgian-controlled Congo and witnesses large-scale depravity. Change a few details, modernise it to be a reflection on a highly unpopular war and voila, an old story is new again.

I appreciated this movie as being fairly decent when I first saw it all those years ago and noticed it has made numerous "must watch before you die" lists, so I wanted to re-watch this with mature eyes - to see if it stood the test of time.

From the initial 1979 release, two subsequent versions were created - Redux and Director's Cut. However here, I'll only be reviewing the standard theatrical cut. Redux adds scenes to the standard cut, and then Francis Ford Coppola went and added yet more scenes to create the Director's Cut which removed some scenes from Redux. Can't wait for the Mega-Ultra-Redux-Director's Cut-5-Hour-Marathon edition…

The plot:

The movie follows Capt. Ben Willard (Martin Sheen) who we see alone on a bed in a Saigon hotel room dealing with the mental demons from his previous Vietnam deployments and his inability to adjust to life back home. He is suddenly visited by military escorts and summoned to appear before higher-ups who have a mission for him. The mission (should he choose to accept it) is to "terminate, with extreme prejudice" the command of Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a brilliant soldier who has decided to separate from the US forces and now has his own private militia in Cambodia that worship him as a god.

To get to the Cambodian outpost where Kurtz is located, he needs to take a patrol boat captained by Phillips (Albert Hall) and manned by Chef (Frederic Forrest), Mr Clean (Laurence Fishburne) and Johnson (Sam Bottoms), a former pro-surfer.

Needing assistance from a helicopter regiment to get to a safe point to begin their river journey, they engage Lt Col Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who isn't too thrilled at being required to perform escort duty - until he learns that former pro-surfer Johnson is with them and he suddenly becomes a lot more amenable. Kilgore then launches an assault on a town that lies at the river entry for the two-fold purpose of fulfilling his escort mission as well as getting to surf. Kilgore is fond of using music as part of warfare, so he commands his unit to blast out "Ride Of The Valkyries" over the sound system on a helicopter (which is where we get that famous scene).

Being horrified at the wanton destruction of lives both guilty and innocent, Willard pushes on with the mission. At a rest stop, Willard and Chef look for mangoes, but find a tiger instead which causes Chef to have a brief mental breakdown. Alongside this, Willard and Phillips argue about who is in control - Willard whose mission it is, or Phillips who is steering the actual boat.

The crew eventually reach an American military outpost to stock up on fuel and supplies, right at the very time the outpost is getting a visit from three Playboy Playmates whose shaking and gyrations lead the soldiers to rush the stage, causing the show to be cut short.

As the crew continue their journey up the river, their tempers and their sanity fray. Johnson becomes withdrawn, and the crew stop a small sampan which they suspect is carrying weapons and/or fighters. When they see one of the women move to cover something, all hell breaks loose and it is only after all the bullets have stopped flying that they find the woman was covering a puppy.

The crew eventually reach the last American outpost before Cambodia which is in the middle of a firefight with VC forces for control of a bridge. Here, the crew receives mail and Willard who receives further intelligence indicating that the previous American soldier who was tasked with terminating Kurtz actually ended up joining him.

Passing in to Cambodia, the nerves of the men are completely on edge. Johnson, under the influence of LSD, lights up a smoke grenade that attracts the attention of Montagnards who start shooting numerous arrows and spears at the crew, causing Mr Clean's death. Further up the river, Phillips is impaled by a spear and in his last moments attempts to kill Willard, but is overpowered.

Chef now has control of the boat and they reach their destination - a Cambodian temple strewn with the bodies and heads of numerous victims (much like in Outlast 2) where they are greeted by an American photojournalist (Dennis Hopper) who gushes over the philosophical/intellectual brilliance of Kurtz. Willard is taken in by Kurtz and confined to a bamboo cage while Chef stays with the boat and Johnson mingles with Kurtz' subjects. After Chef's head is thrown in to Willard's lap, Willard is released from the cage and spends a few days listening to the ramblings (to put it mildly) of Kurtz while questioning his own morality.

Willard finally completes his mission by attacking Kurtz with a machete whose final words are "the horror, the horror". When Willard emerges from Kurtz' chambers, the locals acknowledge him as their leader and allow him and Johnson safe passage back to the boat where Willard turns off the radio before he can call in an airstrike.

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It's an epic movie, that's for sure, and pulls very few punches. By the end, your sense of right and wrong are blurred. I'd go so far to argue that Kurtz is assassinated because he out-America'd the Americans. You see, only American forces can kill civilians without recriminations - not Americans who go freelance. And as an epic piece of work, it certainly does the job!

But (and there's almost always a but) I think the last chapter of the movie is what stops it from being a full 5/5. I knew I was in for a long ride, but it was jarring how the crew take this really long boat ride up the river which in some ways felt a little rushed, but then they get to Kurtz' temple and things REALLY slow down to the point that I had to wonder how much longer was left in the movie.

Which brings me to Marlon Brando - I think Marlon Brando is a great actor, but with being a great (and highly-paid) actor comes great responsibilities and it's quite obvious here that Brando turned up to work out of shape and unprepared. The clever use of lighting (mostly) hides things, but I could tell even from my tablet screen that something wasn't quite right. In fact, if I was Martin Sheen, I'd be downright pissy - you put in all this effort to convey a character that drives the movie along and then that guy just rocks up to work and phones it in.

Though I think the battle scenes were something to behold, and I have a particular fascination about how much effort is required to make them all work.

So with all that said, while Anora is probably the best film I've seen to not be ranked Best In Class, Apocalypse Now turns out to be one of the worst of the Best In Class category BECAUSE of the last stanza of the film. I can see what they were trying to do, but I think it could/should have been done differently.

Final words: an excellent example of film-making that gets us to explore our own conscience and the brutality of war. It is, however, dragged down by the last section up until the story finally ends.

STAR RATING: 4.6/5