Review: Apocalypse Now (1979)

'I love the smell of napalm in the morning.'

★★★★

Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now (1979)"

Easily, the best of the 1970s and one of the greatest war films of all time.

A dangerous and delusional expedition upriver is undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) in Vietnam in 1970 to locate and remove Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has supposedly gone entirely insane. Willard ventures deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness with the help of a Navy patrol boat full of streetwise youngsters, a surfing-mad Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazy freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper).

So what works in the picture? Well, a lot! The casting is perfect, the pacing is smooth, the score is haunting yet beautiful, the set design is well done, the action is realistic, and the special effects were ahead of their time.

This film is pretty lengthy, so it may or may not be finished in one sitting. I can understand that the topics covered in this film can be very sensitive and controversial, but that's okay. Looking past all of that, the film still holds up very well, and like I said, it doesn't feel like a film from 1979; it feels like it was made in 2015.

You also may have noticed that Marlon Brando was in this film, and I'm sure everyone has heard his story behind the scenes. Before you start bashing Brando, Coppola had this to say about him: "Marlon was never hard to work with. His behavior on the set was a little eccentric, like a bad boy who did what he wanted. But as an actor, he was never hard to work with. He was a true genius because of the way he thought about life, about termites, about people, about ants, about reality." Brando only made changes to his character not to get paid more, but to enhance the character.

But I digress. This movie offers one of the most haunting experiences ever. It can easily be regarded as one of the greatest war films ever made. Adding to the haunting experience, one of the most eerie movie endings ever is featured in this picture, which is a beautiful representation of what Kurtz has found and what we hope not to find out for ourselves.

Francis Ford Coppola is one of Hollywood's finest directors.