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-Short Attention Span Theater-
The Greatest War Movie Ever Made
2019-08-10
[National Review] The second-to-last comment made by Colonel Walter E. Kurtz is this: "Their commanders won’t allow them to write ’F***’ on their airplanes because it’s obscene." In Apocalypse Now we’ve seen a cavalry officer wipe out a village and call in a napalm strike to make a beach safe for surfing. We’ve seen the hero of the piece fatally shoot a badly wounded woman because he doesn’t want the hassle of bringing her to a hospital. Kurtz lives in an infernal empire of rotting corpses and severed heads. Words are obscene? War is obscene. Maybe one war in particular.

Regardless of whether that assertion is true, Apocalypse Now is a vision of fierce but controlled passion, grotesque and beautiful. If it ended at the 45-minute mark, after Colonel Kilgore extols the fragrance of a.m. napalm, it would still be the dean of all war movies, the sharpest and most haunting.

Apocalypse Now is returning to theaters for one night, August 15, exactly 40 years after its original release, and then being reissued in a "final cut" DVD. The original version ran 153 minutes, but after movie nerds started enthusing about the supposedly superior version containing "lost footage," director Francis Ford Coppola delivered the sprawling Apocalypse Now Redux in 2002. He now says that version was "a little too long" at three hours and 22 minutes. Wrong: it was way too long. The "final cut" version is three hours and three minutes, and although some of the restored material is interesting, none of it is essential. The best cut remains the first theatrical release.
Posted by:Besoeker

#20  My daughter actually sat down and watched the whole movie a couple of years ago, and she said that it was absolutely fab ... right up until Marlon Brando appeared in it. And at that point ... it all tanked, faster than the Titanic.
Her theory is that Coppola was putting everything on a bet that Brando would put in an amazing performance.
Which he did, sort of ... but it was wholly unrelated to the first part of the movie. Just kind of fizzled from there, she said.
I've been of the opinion that Tropic Thunder was a pitch-perfect parody of the filming of Apocalypse Now.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom   2019-08-10 18:13  

#19  What Mercutio said.

♪Ho Chi Minh is a son of a bitch!
♫Got the blueballs, crabs and the seven-year itch!
Posted by: Dron66046   2019-08-10 16:01  

#18  "Rumors of War",....oh wait....that was a book.
Posted by: crazyhorse   2019-08-10 15:50  

#17  'Saving Private Ryan' for me.
Posted by: Besoeker   2019-08-10 15:24  

#16  Have to go with The Longest Day. A lot of reality on the lead up to the decision and then the execution. The scenes from the Germany command side and all the dichotomy of decision malfunction from Hitler down to the Himmler/Goering set was revealing.
Posted by: Chath Angens8595   2019-08-10 15:00  

#15  A long dead friend used to swear that a bridge like that existed in a state like that. He was 4 years in the Delta on a 4 man kill team so I believe him.
Also the Tiger mango bit with fat tigers ringed true to him.
His preferred weapon in the narrow delta jungle paths where the average fire fight lasted 4 seconds was - 2 sawed off 8 gauges with buck shot on swivel holsters off each hip. - hear something and shoot each side of the path. Bird, tiger, enemy who cares as you live.

Posted by: 3dc   2019-08-10 14:22  

#14  My favorite Apocalypse Now line was actually the setup to Kilgore's napalm soliloquy, the spotter on the OV-1 on the radio saying "You got about thirty seconds to get your people back and get your heads down, this is gonna be a big one..."
Posted by: M. Murcek   2019-08-10 12:24  

#13  I liked Dunkirk, which featured the heroic retreat of UK.
Posted by: Regular joe   2019-08-10 12:11  

#12  I really liked Apocalypse now because it captured the scale like few war movies ever have (Battle of Hue in Full Metal Jacket and Beach assault in Private Ryan are exceptions).

Too bad he made that horrible directors cut/moneygrab that just slowed the pacing down to a crawl.
Posted by: ruprecht   2019-08-10 12:03  

#11  Another clickbait article...
From the flawed (but fun!) Zulu(1964), the tragicomic Charge of the Light Brigade(1968), sardonic Breaker Morant(1980), cynical Paths of Glory(1956), on to mini-series Gettysburg(1993)... There are so many that assigning a G.O.A.T, seems rather silly because there will always be another.
Posted by: magpie   2019-08-10 11:41  

#10  Yawn. A lame attempt that failed to capture Conrad's infinite subtlety - but definitely scored political points with Hollywood gatekeepers and moneymen.
Posted by: Lex   2019-08-10 11:04  

#9  Kelly's Heroes is the best war movie.
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2019-08-10 10:37  

#8  Hamburger Hill - You are NOT my brother...""
Posted by: M. Murcek   2019-08-10 10:22  

#7  Now "Full Metal Jacket" was a war movie.
Posted by: Mercutio   2019-08-10 10:20  

#6  wasn't a war movie, was a political movie.
Posted by: Mercutio   2019-08-10 10:19  

#5  I wasn't there but my friends who were told me the movie's power was in its surreality, which was what the reality felt like.
Posted by: Glenmore   2019-08-10 09:42  

#4  I was just thinking the other day. What ever happened to the "mindthoughts" asshole?
Posted by: M. Murcek   2019-08-10 09:13  

#3  War is obscene. Maybe one war in particular


4000 year record of history seems to be on Trotsky's side - you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Like it or not.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2019-08-10 09:11  

#2  Giant can of worms. Heart of Darkness was much more cerebral than Apocalypse Now, but you would never have gotten the latter without the former. Just as we'll never build another Hoover Dam, we'll never have another war exactly like Viet Nam and we'll never get the folklore that came with it from the crap in the middle east.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2019-08-10 09:09  

#1  Greatest war movie? Doubtful, but a movie which, among other things, revealed or reminded us of the existence of... 'wars within wars.' Not much appears to have changed in 40 years.
Posted by: Besoeker   2019-08-10 08:32  

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