DVDs

Apocalypse Now

Region 1

Region 4

By Richard Moore

It's hard to know exactly where to start a review of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, other than by saying it is a DVD that you have to see as it is quite rightly regarded as one of the best war movies ever made.

Having seen the original on the big screen, and then many times on the Cretin Box or video, the extra 49 minutes of film put in for this Apocalypse Now Redux version has made it even more powerful and engaging.

It is the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), an army assassin who is given orders to execute a renegade American officer, Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) during the Vietnam War.

Kurtz has seemingly gone insane and the top brass want him removed.

The trouble is that as Willard journeys by river into Cambodia he discovers that maybe the man knows what he is doing and may in fact have the answers to winning the unwinnable war. And the journey Willard embarks upon, aboard the patrol boat Streetgang, is as wild an adventure as you would ever want to join.

The commander of the boat is The Chief (Albert Hall) who is as straightlaced as they come. The other three members of the crew are not. There's Chef (Frederick Forrest), Miller (a very, very young Laurence Fishburne) and pro-surfer Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms).

The weirder the war gets, the more drugged out and loopy the crew gets.

One of the most memorable characters is the eccentric air cavalry commander Colonel William Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who attacks a Viet Cong-held coastal village just so he can let some of his men surf.

Two of the most well known quotes from movies come from him "Charlie don't surf" and "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

The sequence where his helicopter gunships come in over the water with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries screaming out is truly amazing.

However way-out Kilgore happens to be, it is nothing to what Willard and the crew of the Streetgang have to face further up the river.

There is the Show for the Boys with Playboy bunnies, the surreal night scenes at a bridge under attack, arriving at the French plantation, Kurtz's base and the gut-wrenching search of a sanpan.

Once he meets Kurtz, Willard then has to weigh up his orders against what he wants to do and the penultimate scene is both beautifully photgraphed and brutal.

Director Francis Ford Coppola copped a lot of flak for making Apocalypse Now, there were so many problems at one stage it didn't look like being finished, but what he came up with is piece of film-making almost without peer.

Sheen is outstanding as the initially tormented killer who discovers that he is actually more sane than most in the war.

Brando, criticised for his huge pay packet for what the critics said was very little work, is sinisterly reasonable (to a point) as Kurtz.

The crew of the Streetgang works brilliantly together and really it is their disintegration that makes the movie. It is amazing that Fishburne was only 14 when cast, and only 17 when the movie was released!

Also watch out for Dennis Hopper as the freaked out photojournalist and Harrison Ford as the young military aide.

This remastered version looks utterly stunning and while there is some grain at times is truly gorgeous.

Some words of advice - watch it on the biggest screen you can. The sound, which was done almost entirely from scratch for the Redux, is rich, filled with positional depth and is as exciting as you will hear. I rate it 10/10.

The extra scenes are clearly marked on the scene selection and they really do add a whole new depth to Apocalypse Now. Whether it be the hoplessness of the war - in the scene with the stranded Playboy Bunnies - or the history of the conflict from the French viewpoint - a much-maligned addition, but one I found both interesting and giving more balance to why America was fighting.

If you want to see one of the greatest movies ever made, in the way it was meant to be seen, then Apocalypse Now Redux is the way to do it.

Conclusion:

Movie: 95%

DVD Extras: 65%