Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players (Apocalypse); DVD from NetFlix on laptop (Hearts).
It’s not easy to write about Apocalypse Now because so much has already been written about it. I’ll come clean at the start here and say that I think it’s the best Vietnam War film ever made and one of the best war films in general. When I was younger, I’d have picked Full Metal Jacket. FMJ is underrated—the opening half is so good that people forget just how solid the second half is. But Apocalypse Now is the full package. It conveys not only the battlefield of the war, but the mental landscape as well. It’s as much a physical depiction of the war as it is an emotional reaction to it.
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has returned to Saigon after rotating back to the U.S. following his first tour. He spends a week in a hotel room slowly going crazy until he is given an assignment. His mission is to commandeer a boat and take it up river into Cambodia and take out a man named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has gone off the rails from the more standard operating procedure of the U.S. military. Accompanying him on this mission are the crew of his boat: Chief (Albert Hall), who wants to keep his men safe and make it back; “Chef” Hicks (Frederic Forrest), a New Orleans saucier who really just wants to make food; “Clean” (Laurence Fishburne), a young kid who possibly lied about his age to join the military; and Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), a world-class surfer-turned-sailor.
