Starring: Sam Bottoms, Marlon Brando, Bo Byers, Colleen Camp, Robert Duvall Average Rating: Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Original recording remastered, NTSC Label: Paramount Number of Items: 2 Release Date: November 20, 2001 Running Time: 153 minutes Theatrical Release Date: August 15, 1979
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
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
Horrible packaging & missing essentials ruins great features Alright, let me start off by saying that, although this dossier has a huge amount of lost footage, features, and pretty much everything but the kitchen seat, it is FAR from "complete". There was an exclusive 3-Disc version sold at Target which has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. I find it ironic they call the more common two-disc dossier the essential version, when it doesn't even have the trailers or the "Compound Explosion" scene, regardless of the fact that it has everything else. There's also a work print version flying around, and Francis Ford Coppola even said it himself that the raw, raw footage went for over 5 hours long and added-up to over a million feet of film total.
I got this for $9, but I never thought WHY it was marked-down. I think I have a theory now. This packaging is so flimsy that it actually came-apart from a poor glue job. And that black part in the upper-left, as well as the back? That's not "really" a part of the set: its a shamelessly tacked-on piece of paper, holding-on only by a sparse amount of glue on the top of the cheap cardboard case. Its not even applied to the whole of the back surface area, its just kind of there to fool you! The "wax" seal is a criminally weak piece of cardboard with barely-functioning velcro to help keep the contents inside. I actually kept the plastic wrap this DVD came in just to keep the back side intact.
Looks can be deceiving. Only buy this if its very cheap, or if its the three-disc version. This abomination is an insult to Coppola's masterpiece.
THE ULTIMATE VIETNAM MOVIE Apocalypse Now - The Complete Dossier (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition) Many thought this would be the Vietnam film to end them all. Parts of this long film ARE BRILLIANT. The opening sequences are stunningly atmospheric - VITTORIO STORARO's Cinematography is Superb. Martin Sheen's voice - over narration is another successful ingredient of the film. But the movie is also often slow and pretentious. It's action throws in every possible atrocity to shock the viewer: in words as well as in pictures Francis Ford Coppola plays heavily for effect. MARLON BRANDO is superb as Colonel Kurtz. Sheen hacks him to pieces, in a terribly GORY SEQUENCE, with a Machete to symbolise the simultaneous slaughter of a sacrificial buffalo. Coppola does attempt to balance his elements with injections of some black humour, including a superbly choreographed attack by helicopters to the music of 'RIDE OF THE VALKYRIE'. Robert Duvall gives one of the BEST PERFORMANCES of his career. Look-out for Harrison Ford in a very tiny cameo.
Absolutely Amazing Definitely one of the best Vietnam war movies out there. It is more about the psychological trama of the Vienam war which I liked. It can seem a little out there from time to time but that's to get the viewer to understand it from the main character's point of view. This is definitely not for the younger kids out there and it is pretty intense. It is a must have for any DVD collection. It is one of those classic movies everyone has to see at least once. The acting is amazing. Just an overall great movie.
The Only Way To Watch It On DVD This is a very creative box cover and with the included two discs you get Apocalypse Now which looks great on the DVD, you also get Apocalypse Now Redux a 2001 version of the movie with Remastered video quality and over one hour of additional scenes added into the movie itself that were cut from the original, and many other features including interviews and watching the movie with commentaries from director as the movie plays. All in all i'd say this is a perfect product. However it must be noted that since the movie is very lengthy especially the Redux version, the movie is split with the first half on disc 1 then the second half switching to disc 2. Not a real annoyance or problem its just something you should know.
Great to see these movies again! I was pleased with my purchase of the two-disc special collectors edition. Still great after all these years.
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