Apocalypse Now (1979)
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
THE SUMMARY: A young Army captain Martin Sheen is sent by river from Vietnam to Cambodia on a secret mission to execute a rogue special forces commander with excellent scenes of raw warfare and its human struggle along the way. The journey is a long one, but especially for a film over 40 years old, the story and presentation’s impressiveness is undeniable.
Note: for this review, I watched the original 1979 cut, not any of the alternate cuts.
THE BEST:
War is hell, and rarely clean or glorious: The best scenes in the movie are actually the worst, as in the most brutal and the toughest to watch. The movie is great in its presentation of the worst of warfare - not just death, not just pain, but the surprising and cruel timing and methods with which they strike. Several scenes in this movie are dramatic examples: the suicide grenade woman against the helicopter, the search of the Vietnamese boat that results in execution and the puppy discovery, and Mr. Clean’s death while listening to an audio recording from his family. That last one hit me the hardest.
The grenade surprise
Even the end scene wasn’t celebratory - it was simply a task that had to be done, and nobody took any particular joy or glory in completing it. Indeed, ‘the horror… the horror…’ is the point.
The action scenes are incredible, especially for their time: To achieve a movie this believable in its large-scale action presentation is no small feat. To do it in the ‘70s is even more impressive. The gunfights, the explosions, the gore - everything holds up and looks just as good as any digital creation today. I can see why the shooting time and the budget swelled well beyond initial plans. None of this is digital artwork, and it wasn’t even models or miniatures either - it was all done for real, and that deserves a lot of respect.
Goofy cameo for the director: It wasn’t needed, and you can argue it was goofy and self-indulgent, but I do appreciate the moment of director Francis Ford Coppola giving himself a cameo in the movie as a news/documentary director. He’s directing the soldiers to move along and not look into the camera, while actually directing the movie itself. Wow, very meta, bro.
THE WORST:
It’s too long: When it’s on, it’s on, but the movie does drag with some efforts to be ‘cinematic’ or ‘psychologically deep’ - it’s not that these are always a waste of time, but there are a few scenes that just add length without adding much substance. The movie takes its time to start, and the Playboy playmates scene could have been eliminated outright. I get it’s probably supposed to represent the dangers of showing a starving man a steak, or the overall folly of the Vietnam war, or something poetic like that, but if representing the struggles and missteps of war was the goal, the scenes showing struggles and missteps in war were much more effective.
They were real playmates, by the way. Cyndi Wood was Playmate of the Year 1974 and Linda Carpenter was Playmate of the Month August 1976.
THE RATING: 4/5 Wickies. Not quite up there with my favorite war movies, but plenty good and I have to give credit for the achievement that it is for its time.
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NEXT WEEK: Total Recall (1990)
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