Short Summary is an original series in which I write brief reviews of movies, TV shows, video games, books, and more. No spoilers in this one, I swear!
Hollywood does not make movies like this one anymore. That’s not just an old saying being applied here; that’s a fact. It just doesn’t.
Much in the way that Francis Ford Coppola defined mafia/gangster movies with The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, he defined Vietnam War movies with Apocalypse Now. Maybe all war movies to follow. Hell, even the Vietnam War itself, which had only ended four years before the movie was released. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, Coppola himself held a press conference and stated, “My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It’s what it was really like.”
You can really feel that as you watch Apocalypse Now. The production value of this movie is insane and brutal, from the enormous, practical explosions tearing down tree lines in the Philippines to a water buffalo actually being slaughtered during a tribal ceremony. The choreography, visual style, and other effects are gritty, and they created some of the greatest moments in cinema. The locations and physical sets put you in Vietnam. The use of real military uniforms, weapons, jets, helicopters, and boats put you in Vietnam. You are in Vietnam for the whole movie.
However, it’s not just the production of the film that encapsulates the Vietnam War, but the story and characters and how war affects soldiers psychologically. Apocalypse Now, in my opinion, is one of the best war movies to truly dive deep into the human psyche. Regarding the movie, Roger Ebert said, “[It] goes into the dark parts of the soul, and war reveals truths that we’d much rather never discover.” The film shows the external fight, which already has gray areas, yet it examines the internal battle in its most extreme. It’s about what the soldiers have seen and done and how those can’t be unseen or undone. It’s the cruelest case of fighting for survival, killing or being killed.
There’s just one thing that I dislike about Apocalypse Now, and it has to do with the redux version of the movie. You shouldn’t avoid the redux; there are a few scenes that were added that are interesting. There’s one scene, though, that is honestly awful and throws you out of the movie. It’s a scene that takes place on a plantation inhabited by French people. I advise that you skip this entire scene. There’s a reason that it was cut from the original version, and the reason is because this scene doesn’t belong in the movie whatsoever.
Ultimately, I feel like Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen, and it should be required viewing. I think that’s the highest praise I can give it.
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