Quartile rating: 9/10 · 4 ratings
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
Apocalypse Now is a towering achievement in nearly every dimension. The plot, loosely adapted from Conrad's Heart of Darkness, builds a hypnotic, escalating dread that transcends its war-movie premise. The acting — Brando's mythic, menacing Kurtz, Sheen's haunted Willard, Duvall's unforgettable Kilgore — is exceptional across the board. Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is among the most visionary ever committed to film, from the napalm sunrises to the ghostly jungle river sequences. As a work of surrealist war cinema, it remains utterly singular and unmistakable in voice and conception. The ending, however, is the film's most debated element — Brando's improvised, elliptical conclusion is powerful but also somewhat opaque and narratively unsatisfying for many viewers, keeping it from matching the near-perfection of what precedes it.