Synopsis
One of a cluster of late-1970s films about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now adapts the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to depict the war as a descent into primal madness. Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen), already on the edge, is assigned to find and deal with AWOL Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), rumored to have set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a local, lethal godhead. Along the way Willard encounters napalm and Wagner fan Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), draftees who prefer to surf and do drugs, a USO Playboy Bunny show turned into a riot by the raucous soldiers, and a jumpy photographer (Dennis Hopper) telling wild, reverent tales about Kurtz. By the time Willard sees the heads mounted on stakes near Kurtz's compound, he knows Kurtz has gone over the deep end, but it is uncertain whether Willard himself now agrees with Kurtz's insane dictum to "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all." Coppola himself was not certain either, and he tried several different endings between the film's early rough-cut screenings for the press, the Palme d'Or-winning "work-in-progress" shown at Cannes, and the final 35 mm U.S. release (also the ending on the video cassette). The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Despite the studio's fears and mixed reviews of the film's ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Duvall's psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound and for Vittorio Storaro's cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor; it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions and confusions of the Vietnam era.
What Critics Say
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Movie News
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Coppola Will Release Expanded 'Apocalypse Now' at Cannes
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 27, 2001 -- Those who enjoyed "Apocalypse Now" will be glad to know that director Francis Ford Coppola plans to screen his landmark film this May at the Cannes Film Festival. The film promises to be bigger, better and more disturbing than ever.
Coppola has added nearly an hour of footage to the new version of the 1979 war epic. In a statement Coppola said that the new version is three hours and seventeen minutes long, and does not re-use scenes left out of the 1979 release. Instead it was re-edited using original material.
Coppola calls the new version of the film "a more disturbing, sometimes funnier and more romantic film, whose historical perspective has become more forceful." It's also 53 minutes longer than the original.
Inspired by the Joseph Conrad's ``Heart of Darkness,'' the film stars Martin Sheen as a special agent sent into the Cambodian
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"Apocalypse Now" arrives with a roar
The new director's cut of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 war drama Apocalypse Now, renamed Apocalypse Now Redux, is attracting sell-out crowds at virtually all the 19 theaters in which it is being shown in the U.S. and Canada.
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Apocalypse now: the millennial movie countdown
The clock is ticking down. There are only a few more weeks to catch up on Hollywood's end-of-the-world flicks before life as we know it goes to ... well, you know.
Don't worry about whether you're prepared for armageddon, though. We've done the research and stocked the shelter with enough apocalyptic flicks to see anyone through a nuclear winter.
So grab your sunscreen, head for the hills and remember the remote. It's time for the final countdown:
20. "The Omega Man" — Imagine your worst nightmare about the end of the world, and Charlton Heston probably suffers it in this adaptation of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend." He's the last guy on Earth, and as luck would have it, there are zombies spawned from germ warfare trying to tear his guts out.
19. "The Seventh Sign" — Forget Ah-nuld in "End of Days." The true biblical blood curdler is this mid-'80s parabl