Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Movie review
From Time Out London
No deleted scenes or unseen Sheen, just a straight remaster and reissue for the relatively lean, unrelentingly mean original cut of Coppola’s massive man-on-a-mission masterpiece. Shorn of its ‘Redux’ excesses, which transformed this already epic film into something sprawling, unwieldy and soap-operatic (if still brilliant), it’s remarkable how slick and streamlined the film feels: five guys in a boat, and the river only goes one way.Not that there isn’t room for experimentation. The central storyline – Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is tasked with tracking down and executing Marlon Brando’s rogue Colonel Kurtz – is essentially a slender thread upon which Coppola and his co-writer John Milius hang a number of increasingly wild asides. But these brief, brutal and seemingly unconnected incidents work together to drive the film forward: in their very randomness, they build a picture of a war being fought without strategy or clear intent, making Willard’s mission simultaneously clearer and more morally meaningless.
In contrast to Coppola’s earlier ‘The Godfather Part II’ and ‘The Conversation’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ isn’t a conspicuously ‘smart’ film: literary references aside, there are no intellectual pretensions here. Instead, as befits both its tortuous hand-to-mouth genesis and the devastating conflict it reflects, this is a film of pure sensation, dazzling audiences with light and noise, laying bare the stark horror – and unimaginable thrill – of combat. And therein lies the true heart of darkness: if war is hell and heaven intertwined, where does morality fit in? And, in the final apocalyptic analysis, will any of it matter?
Author: Tom Huddleston
Time Out London Issue 2127: May 26 – June 3, 2011
Cast & crew
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Producer: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper, Larry Fishburne, Sam Bottoms, Harrison Ford full cast
Genre(s): War
Duration: 153 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now