Francis Ford Coppola was a director who could do no wrong in the '70's thanks to masterpieces like "The Godfather" parts I-II and "The Conversation" but this movie was very new territory for him as a director but not asa a screenwriter due to the fact that he co-wrote the Oscar winning screenplay for "Patton" and with this he succeeded in making one of the very best war movies of all time. The main character of the movie is an Army captain named Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) who is assigned on a classified mission by Gen.Corman (G.D. Spradlin) and Col. lucas (Harrison Ford) to kill Col. Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who is a renegade soldier who has gone completely insane due to the effects that war has had on him, and whose actions are described as "unsound". Willard has to go through extremely dangerous territory whether it's going through battles with the help of Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), heading a long river with three other soldiers to help him get to the site of his mission, and finally being at the site of the mission which is a potential deathtrap. This movie isn't your traditional war movie because of the fact that there isn't a lot of battle scenes in it which isn't supposed to be the takeaway one gets from seeing a movie like this but the fact that that war is hell and damages a lot of people mentally. When Willard gets to Kurtz's house he meets a photojournalist (Dennis Hopper) who is totally afraid of Col. Kurtz and an old friend named Colby (Scott Glenn) who has become one of Kurtz's followers. The movie is a masterclass in how a movie should be made with a masterful screenplay, amazing Oscar winning cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, great performances throughout (especially by Sheen and Brando who deserved Oscar nominations for their work), and of course flawless execution and masterful direction by Coppola. This is one of the best military movies I've seen in a long time along with "The Deer Hunter", "Patton", "The Hurt Locker", "All Quiet on the Western Front", "Platoon", "Saving Private Ryan", "Twelve O'Clock High", "American Sniper", "Inglourious Basterds", and "The Longest Day" just to name some prime examples. This is the very best movie of 1979 and one that is sure to not be forgotten anytime soon, it is a true masterpiece.
Review of Apocalypse Now
