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List Price: $19.99 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 1290
Released: August 15, 2006 |
| Our Price: $11.97 |
| Used Price: $9.38 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, this classic and compelling Vietnam War epic stars Martin Sheen as Captain Willard, who is sent on a dangerous and mesmerizing odyssey into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade American Colonel named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has succumbed to the horrors of war and barricaded himself in a remote outpost. Also stars Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper and Harrison Ford.
Description of Apocalypse Now - The Complete Dossier (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition):
In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story "Heart of Darkness" into the horrors of the Vietnam War, following a battle-weary Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a secret upriver mission to find and execute the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has reverted to a state of murderous and mystical insanity. The journey is fraught with danger involving wartime action on epic and intimate scales. One measure of the film's awesome visceral impact is the number of sequences, images, and lines of dialogue that have literally burned themselves into our cinematic consciousness, from the Wagnerian strike of helicopter gunships on a Vietnamese village to the brutal murder of stowaways on a peasant sampan and the unflinching fearlessness of the surfing warrior Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who speaks lovingly of "the smell of napalm in the morning." Like Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is the product of genius cast into a pit of hell and emerging, phoenix-like, in triumph. Coppola's obsession (effectively detailed in the riveting documentary Hearts of Darkness, directed by Coppola's wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. --Jeff Shannon
Apocalypse Now - The Complete Dossier (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition) Reviews:
A masterpiece 
2009-10-27 - This is my favorite "Vietnam War" film, though it is more of an anti-war film set during the war. The characters and soundtrack are all likeable and eccentric, and some humor is thrown in at times. The director's cut adds a lot of previously-unseen footage, most of which adds to the film's side stories and character backgrounds. Overall a very powerful visual depiction of the chaos and confusion of war.
advise from a true fan of the original Apocalypse Now 
2009-10-11 - Folks,
Those of you consider yourselves a true loyal fan of this great epic should first consider buying the documentary, "Hearts of Darkness - A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" (1991). After seeing this epic of a documentary of the making of Apocalypse Now then go out and buy the "second" Apocalypse Now with "Redux" at the end. Francis Ford Coppola clearly states why he made the original the way it is and in particular why he took out the (slow and confusing) French Plantation scene. There is a lot of the French Plantation scene shown in Hearts of Darkness - A Filmmaker's Apocalypse so Redux is really not the first time the scene is shown although you don't see the entire scene in the documentary you aren't missing anything hence the reason Coppola took it out! The addition helicopter/Playboy scene is useless and they didn't even film the entire script of that segment due to the pouring rain.
I just want to message that IMO "Redux" is a rip off. The rabid fans (like me) of Apocalypse Now must see it and own it but know it for what it is... another way to get at your money for little substance in return.
The original version RULES! :)
Thanks for reading,
Rick
Austin, TX
PS: Charlie Don't Surf !!!!!!!
Just Remarkable
2009-09-25 - Apocalypse Now is loosely based on the book `Hear of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; the film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and set in the Vietnam War; Martin Sheen plays Captain Benjamin L. Willard who is picked from a `Special forces' group to hunt down and assassinate Colonel Walter Kurtz, who has supposed to have gone insane. Kurtz is played only shortly by Marlon Brando but he gives off the impression that the madness of war he has witnessed in this "new war" Vietnam, has pushed him over the edge. Dennis Hopper plays a brilliant bit part as the photojournalist; he reviles Kurtz like a poetic God, the parts played by the crew of the small boat are played well by Frederic Forrest as the `Chef', Laurence Fishburne as `Mr. Clean' (A young colored boy who thinks the war is one big adventure). There are other parts played by Robert Duvall who plays Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who tries to act like one of the boys and likes to surf. Harrison Ford plays a bit part early on in the film as an up and coming gopher for the generals.
Along with Coppola, John Milius has written a brilliant a subtle screenplay about the horror of war, the whole film works well although it is renowned for the multitude of problems while filming. The film was filmed in the Philippines and on numerous occasions the President of the country had to take the helicopters that he had rented to Coppola away to fight the real `Revolution' on the opposite side of the film. The film was also to run into numerous financial difficulties that literally bankrupted the Coppola family, but on its release in 1979, the film was rewarded with two Oscars, which in my eyes is a little disappointing.
A good film, but no conclusive edit stops it from being a great one 
2009-09-19 - In Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war film APOCALYPSE NOW, Captain Williard (Martin Sheen) journeys upriver on a classified mission to "terminate the command" of the renegade Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Along the way, he meets the air cavalry commander Lt. Col Kilgore (Robert Duvall) whose biggest concern is not fighting for democracy in Vietnam but good surfing. On the other hand, the motley crew of Williard's boat are unable to handle the stress of combat and completely lose it at more than one point, with tragic results. Two of the army outposts that Williard and his support crew pass through are in complete chaos with no commanding officer to be found. An American photographer the group encounters upriver (Dennis Hopper, in the role of his career) has been so overpowered by the circumstances that he can only babble nonsense. Coppola repeatedly underscored the irrationality and senselessness of war. Once Col. Kurtz appears, it is revealed that the calculated tactics necessary to overcome this senselessness are even more appalling.
Coppola shot far more footage than he could ever fit into a traditional Hollywood film, prompting him to supplement the original cut of the film with a Redux version in 2001 with 49 minutes of never-before-seen material. I've never felt completely satisfied with either version. In the original cut, Williard is an emotionless killing machine, but the Redux version fleshes out the protagonist's internal conflict of moral law versus animal instinct by giving him some moments of humanity, such as prankishly stealing Col. Kilgore's surfboard and setting his men up with some women they encounter. On the other hand, the Redux version brings in far too much extra, such as the tiresome debate amongst French plantation owners about their country's defeat at Dien Bien Phu. APOCALYPSE NOW is a memorable film with many fine performances, but the lack of any truly conclusive edit stops it from really triumphing.
People wanting to get a copy of the film would do well to get this Complete Dossier set, as even though it is one of those "deluxe collector's editions", it is usually fairly economically priced.
Painful dilemma of "just" warring 
2009-09-17 - Apocalypse Now is a powerful film, but not as great as the sales promotion would have it. The director's over-reliance on lavish set craft visually detracts from the psychological and moral tension the screenplay presents. Cinema can deepen discernment of the dilemmas posed by war, but it can also be a gratuitous expression of the film-makers' vanity. This film strays back and forth over the line, and where it strays forth it looks like another Indiana Jones thrill/horror ride.
The crux of the screenplay is this: confronted with horrors (savagery
beyond all previously experienced), what does a person do with the powerful feelings resulting? For some the pain of warring overcomes moral learning, with one possible consequence being the determination to "out-savage" the savage. Once over this line many an individual, including the previously virtuous, fall into the habit of violence. We see this in direct (hostile) and indirect (suicidal) reactions expressed by soldiers suffering PTSD in the wake of horrors of war.
In Apocalypse Now the "protagonists" are psychologically damaged men, one ruined by PTSD and malaria, while the other on his way as a consequence of an illegal (military assassination) assignment. We never see the "antagonists" (Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops); we only hear them on the periphery, mainly in the form of exploding ordinance. We see plenty of civilians falling before the atrocity of napalm bombing and arrogant strafing from helicopter-born cavalry. Call it hell-bent-for-leather staging, which is renowned for its appeal to the subliminally morbid tendencies of war hobbyists in the U.S., and beyond. The only value in the film's infamous surfing scene is to help set viewers up for the appalling "normalcy" of subsequent atrocities.
Despite the film's melodramatic staging, the protagonists grapple with their deathist ideologies. The maddened American colonel chooses (assisted) suicide, while the assassin feels (at some well-constructed depth) pain in serving the equally mad command to kill the colonel, on the grounds that the colonel's methods are "unsound". If you're capable of critical thought you see the elephantine irony right there: assassination deployed to create a "sound" military situation. In this light this film actually succeeds in asking the important question.
In the wake of Bush/Cheney Administration's determination to waterboard (and otherwise torture) antagonists into submission, (post 9/11/01 crimes of atrocity) we can see that the American body politic hasn't learned much from Apocalypse Now, or the wars on Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq. The beatings and butcherings go on, unexamined, in hearts guided by darkness.
