Apocalypse Now | 
 enlarge | Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Actors: Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest
Category: Video
Buy Used: CDN$ 29.99
Rating:  424 reviews
Format: Import, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Vietnamese (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: VHS Tape
EAN: 3333972120146
ASIN: B00004RUDK
Theatrical Release Date: August 15, 1979
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Condition: Cover art slightly differet" has ZOETROPE STUDIOS written on right hand side of box,Ex rental copy, cassette and box have stickers, both in very good condition
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| Editorial Reviews:
From Amazon.com
Digitally remastered with 49 minutes of previously unseen footage, Apocalypse Now Redux is the reference standard of Francis Coppola's 1979 epic. A metaphorical hallucination of the Vietnam War, the film was reconstructed by Coppola and editor Walter Murch to enrich themes and clarify the ending. On that basis Redux is a qualified success, more coherent than the original while inviting the same accusations of directorial excess. The restored "French plantation" sequence adds ghostly resonance to the war's absurdity, and Willard's theft of Colonel Kurtz's beloved surfboard adds welcomed humor to the film's nightmarish upriver journey. An encounter with Playboy Playmates seems superfluous compared to the enhanced interplay between Willard and his ill-fated boat crew, but compensation arrives in the hellish Kurtz compound, where Willard's mission--and the performances of Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando--reach even greater heights of insanity, thus validating Redux as the rightful heir to Coppola's triumphantly rampant ambition. --Jeff Shannon
Amazon.com Essential Video
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
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| Customer Reviews:
 My respect and admiration for Mr. Coppola is of the highest order July 5, 2007
Jenny J.J.I. (That Lives in Northern Nevada)
Marlon Brando is excellent as Col. Kurtz and I can't think of any other actor that could have played the good man gone insane and hold such screen presence. Sheen, as Willard, is fantastic in here also, especially his narration, which runs throughout. It's one of the best narrations, if not the best, I have ever heard in a movie. His voice is just haunting as he relates his thoughts on this incredible, nightmare-like adventure. We can identify with his questioning of his mission and the war in general. My favorite character in the movie has to be Robert Duvall's Lt. Colonel Kilgore who "Hoorah!" about the war. Before this film I never pictured Duvall as a wartime cowboy but honestly it's my favorite of his parts to date. He simply nailed his character, which is one of the best in the entire film, as the gung-ho Air Cavalry commander who loves to surf. Maybe a little over the top but he portrayed that role very well.
The plot is a fairly simple one and it doesn't take too much brainpower to figure out what's going on. Willard's mission is to kill Kurtz, plain and simple. But it's the journey of the film that is really its heart and also the dire situations of war itself. In the Redux version we are forced to sit through the extended French plantation scene and the Playboy bunny scene which really adds nothing to the film's entirety other than it makes it a longer journey. I don't feel they take away anything though; it's just a matter of if you want to watch a three and a half hour movie or the original. Through this journey, the film points out the utter futility and irrelevance of the war to the Americans and the massive affect it had on the soldier who fought in it...in fact, that's the entire point. On top of that, the troops were not supported by the public and that could very well have helped cause a character like Kurtz' to go completely mad.
A big war movie lover, this one is up there with `Platoon' and `The Deer Hunter,' all of them classics. All three have their own strengths and add their own twist to the Vietnam War....so to really say one is better than the other is fairly pointless...even if after having most recently view and I think it's a tad better. In the end, `Apocalypse Now' (1979) is a true classic in either version and worthy of the status it's been given. It's is one of the most ambitious films ever made and a great ending for a golden decade of American cinema.
My respect and admiration for Mr. Coppola is of the highest order July 5, 2007
Jenny J.J.I. (That Lives in Northern Nevada)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Marlon Brando is excellent as Col. Kurtz and I can't think of any other actor that could have played the good man gone insane and hold such screen presence. Sheen, as Willard, is fantastic in here also, especially his narration, which runs throughout. It's one of the best narrations, if not the best, I have ever heard in a movie. His voice is just haunting as he relates his thoughts on this incredible, nightmare-like adventure. We can identify with his questioning of his mission and the war in general. My favorite character in the movie has to be Robert Duvall's Lt. Colonel Kilgore who "Hoorah!" about the war. Before this film I never pictured Duvall as a wartime cowboy but honestly it's my favorite of his parts to date. He simply nailed his character, which is one of the best in the entire film, as the gung-ho Air Cavalry commander who loves to surf. Maybe a little over the top but he portrayed that role very well.
The plot is a fairly simple one and it doesn't take too much brainpower to figure out what's going on. Willard's mission is to kill Kurtz, plain and simple. But it's the journey of the film that is really its heart and also the dire situations of war itself. In the Redux version we are forced to sit through the extended French plantation scene and the Playboy bunny scene which really adds nothing to the film's entirety other than it makes it a longer journey. I don't feel they take away anything though; it's just a matter of if you want to watch a three and a half hour movie or the original. Through this journey, the film points out the utter futility and irrelevance of the war to the Americans and the massive affect it had on the soldier who fought in it...in fact, that's the entire point. On top of that, the troops were not supported by the public and that could very well have helped cause a character like Kurtz' to go completely mad.
A big war movie lover, this one is up there with `Platoon' and `The Deer Hunter,' all of them classics. All three have their own strengths and add their own twist to the Vietnam War....so to really say one is better than the other is fairly pointless...even if after having most recently view and I think it's a tad better. In the end, `Apocalypse Now' (1979) is a true classic in either version and worthy of the status it's been given. It's is one of the most ambitious films ever made and a great ending for a golden decade of American cinema.
A great 2 for 1 deal November 7, 2006
Keith Solomon (Edmonton, AB, Canada)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I think the original version of Apocalypse Now is vastly superior to the needlessly long Redux, although the additional scenes of the latter (the French plantation, Playboy bunnies, Willard stealing the surfboard) are interesting in and of themselves. So now we can have both, in a single, bargain-priced and handsomely packaged edition. As with most DVDs, the bonus deleted scenes are pretty much a waste of time, although they do help a person understand the choices Coppola made in editing, and in that sense, it really drives home the magnitude of his achievement in creating the original masterpiece. I don't like that the movie is broken into two parts; why couldn't they have put the original on one disc, and Redux on the other? But then again, in a long movie most people have to take a bathroom break at some point anyway, and the sampan massacre is an appropriately dramatic scene with which to end part one. All told, The Apocalypse Now Complete Dossier 2-disc special edition is well worth buying.
boring ?!?! July 13, 2004
Lotus Scrum (Phoenix, Az United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I find that the people complaining about this film have missed the point. Its NOT the theatrical version its NOT platoon its NOT full metal jacket, why are they expecting it to be so? Watch the other films then?!?!? This film is one man's glimpse into hell, in particular, the vietnam war experience. It shows how war and the idea of propaganda of wartime to make the government look good etc while good men die make people go mad. It shows the horror of war. After viewing this film I find in NO way it to be boring. I find the complainers comments to be sad and a reflection on them that they might be boring. This is a brilliant film and was NEVER supposed to be a shoot em up hollywood epic. Going into this expecting lots of action is like going into burger king for a pizza. Cmon folks...get a grip on reality! This film is a mind trip. Plain and simple. See its brilliance for what it is, a NEW version! Director's cut if you will but it's NEVER been seen like this. Its new, its refreshing and the new scenes add some "quirky" aspects but meld together well with the original film. For any fans of the orignal that want the original why go here, click the back button and buy the OTHER version. Nuff said.
Brilliant film, Brilliant acting, Brilliant NEW version. Period.
Comes across as a dark odyssey more than a war film. July 10, 2004
Joel Munyon (Joliet, Illinois - the poohole of America.)
PLOT(minus spoilers): We follow five soldiers, led by Sheen's character, as they head out on an assasination mission. The target is a C/O(Brando) who's apparently gone AWOL, having began to slaughter the enemy without orders as well as become a godlike figure in the eyes of many indigenous people in the area, virtually turning them into his warrior slaves. Upon traveling to find the C/O, Sheen becomes strangely intrigued by his military tactics, tactics so swit and terrible that even the VC have become fearful of him. The military, meanwhile, has assured Sheen's character that this commander is indeed insane, but it's the journey up river in which we see.......... EVERYTHING out on the river is insane. Posts are manned without commanders, officers(Robert Duvall) are more fixated on surfing and Play Boy Playmates than their present battle. During these segments, when we move - almost drift - from scene to scene, we begin to see this Vietnam as something different, something more vague and faintly evil than we could ever had dreamt up. This side of the world has gone mad, as Sheen's character soon begins to see ever more clearly. Even the men accompanying him begin to shift towards the other side of sanity. But don't fret, the way this shift is portrayed is a beautiful thing to witness, as is the irony of their endeavor - that, sent to kill an officer for going crazy, EVERYTHING is also crazy, and the AWOL officer makes perhaps the most sense. I suppose this film reiterates all we thought we knew about Vietnam, only it happens in a way that both tears and swallows your preconceptions alive, forcing you to dig ever deeper into the madness that surrounded Vietnam.
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