Sunday, November 28, 2010

River Boat to Hell

Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]As much as I consider myself to be a connoisseur of film, until this past week, I had never seen Apocalypse Now. I was only seven years old when it came out in 1979, so there was no reason for me to have seen it then.  And I'm not big on war movies, so that may explain why it's taken me three decades to watch it.  I saw it in my Netflix recommendations and said why not.  I must say it has stood the test of time and seems almost as relevant today as it did coming out right after Vietnam.  At its base, it's the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) taking a river boat to Cambodia on a covert mission to put a prejudicial end to Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who seemingly is running his own war to the chagrin of the powers that be.  But the film in fact is like some sort of sick, twisted dream, fantastical in its ultimate "horror."  I was tense watching it, wondering if this was the ultimate mind *%@!  And I can see why it's one of Francis Ford Coppola's  masterpieces.  A cinematic depiction of war as the head game of narcissistic men gone rogue or ...surfing.  "Napalm in the morning," drugs and rock and roll, headless bodies, unspoken agendas, and madness.  Indeed, what level of hell could possibly be worse than men at war with themselves?

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