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Apocalypse Now
List Price: $29.98Price: $19.95 You Save: $10.03 (33%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786305609704
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 6305609705
Label: Paramount
Languages: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: August 15, 1979
Running Time: 153 minutes
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: August 15, 1979
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Editorial Review:
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
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - NOT FOR CHILDREN.
GREAT MOVIE. BE FORWARNED IT IS BRUTAL AND VIOLENT. THERE ARE THREE PORNOGRAPHIC SCENES. SO, BE QUICK WITH THE REMOTE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO WATCH GRAPHIC PORNOGRAPHY. IF YOU FAST FORWARD PAST THE PORN IT IS AN AWESOME MOVIE. NON BETTER!
Rating: - Remember why Redux was released?
As a kid I remember hearing about Apocalypse Now and thinking that it was some sort of dark and forbidden territory for a war movie. That was much the way Vietnam was presented to me in general growing up. Since then I've written a college thesis on the war...
I watched the original a number of times and it was entertaining as compact, action packed and surreal. I preferred Platoon. But I always heard stories about "The French Plantation Scene" and "The Bunny Scene". So what did ... Read More
Rating:  - Original, Redux, Where's the "Good" version?
No one seems to realize this but there are not two but three versions of this movie. The end of the original is too short and I find it unsatisfying. Redux is WAAAY to long and drags. A version called "The Directors Cut" came out on VHS some years ago and was somewhere in between the original and the Redux, having a longer end without the dragging middle. I don't like Redux and the original is not as great a film without the enhanced end.
Rating: - a must see
Everyone ought to see this film. (Or films). It's a great price for both versions of the film. My only qualm is that both versions are split over 2 DVDs, rather than having one on one and the other on the other. I haven't gone through any features yet, but it looks like there are quite a few...
Rating: - Love this movie
This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. When it first came out my parents wouldn't watch it. Though when I became an adult I had to see this movie and thought it was excelent. THe acting and casting in this movie was spot on. This is one of the best movies of all time in my mind.
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