Apocalypse Now
Academy Award × 2·AFI #30·BFI #19·National Film Registry
Rent/Purchase
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
What critics thought
Now considered one of the great American films, Apocalypse Now landed to genuinely mixed reviews in 1979 before cementing itself as a modern classic within a few years. Critics then and since have been largely united on the film's staggering visual and auditory power, but sharply divided on whether its intellectual and emotional ambitions are fulfilled — and the question of whether the film is anti-war, pro-war, or simply too seduced by its own spectacle to be either has never been settled.
“Apocalypse Now achieves greatness not by analyzing our 'experience in Vietnam', but by re-creating, in characters and images, something of that experience.”
Roger Ebert·RogerEbert.com
“While much of the footage is breathtaking, Apocalypse Now is emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty.”
Frank Rich·Time
“Apocalypse Now is neither a tone poem nor an opera. It's an adventure yarn with delusions of grandeur, a movie that ends — in the all-too-familiar words of the poet Mr. Coppola drags in by the bootstraps — not with a bang, but a whimper.”
Vincent Canby·New York Times
Genres
Drama, Mystery, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorFrancis Ford Coppola
StarringMartin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Laurence Fishburne
ComposerCarmine Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola
Apocalypse Now
Academy Award × 2·AFI #30·BFI #19·National Film Registry
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
What critics thought
Now considered one of the great American films, Apocalypse Now landed to genuinely mixed reviews in 1979 before cementing itself as a modern classic within a few years. Critics then and since have been largely united on the film's staggering visual and auditory power, but sharply divided on whether its intellectual and emotional ambitions are fulfilled — and the question of whether the film is anti-war, pro-war, or simply too seduced by its own spectacle to be either has never been settled.
“Apocalypse Now achieves greatness not by analyzing our 'experience in Vietnam', but by re-creating, in characters and images, something of that experience.”
Roger Ebert·RogerEbert.com
“While much of the footage is breathtaking, Apocalypse Now is emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty.”
Frank Rich·Time
“Apocalypse Now is neither a tone poem nor an opera. It's an adventure yarn with delusions of grandeur, a movie that ends — in the all-too-familiar words of the poet Mr. Coppola drags in by the bootstraps — not with a bang, but a whimper.”
Vincent Canby·New York Times
Genres
Drama, Mystery, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorFrancis Ford Coppola
StarringMartin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Laurence Fishburne
ComposerCarmine Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola
Rent/Purchase