Willard commences his mission with a small unit of men in a Navy patrol boat. Along the way, they come across a number of variously strange, disconnectedly horrid and uproariously erratic entities - the most memorable of which is Robert Duvall's Lt. Kilgore, a surfing fanatical, riotously brash helicopter commander who takes Willard and his men on a riveting aerial assault in a hot area. Choreographed under a blaring rendition of Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries," this scene just takes your breath away. It is Kilgore the cowboy who raps out the best quotes of this movie, like, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” and, “Charlie don’t surf!” and the REDUX version gives him more ample air time, highlighted by his amusingly desperate attempts to get back his surfboard, which Willard and his men had stolen. Duvall's performance earned him an Oscar nomination.
The REDUX version also includes an exquisitely ethereal encounter with the French at a rubber plantation in the midst of the jungle. Willard and his remaining men have dinner with the Frenchmen, and the conversation essentially courses through the many sundry themes of the movie entire. Afterwards, Willard sleeps and smokes opium with a young French war widow. The aesthetic, dream-like qualities of these plantation scenes are such that it becomes somewhat unclear whether or not these French expatriates are actually just ghosts.
The film reaches its climax when Willard reaches Kurtz's cult-like camp-"the farthest outpost on the river." It is here that the American patrol boat floats right into some horrid apparition of Hell; dead bodies dangling from trees, decapitated heads swarming the landscape. It is here that The Doors' ominous opening number, "The End," gains its relevance. The dead are omnipresent here, yet strangely far removed. Indeed, this is the way the world ends. The remaining living population is veritably brainwashed, worshipping their leader, Kurtz, like he's some kind of mystic divinity. At this point, the film takes on an almost mythical quality. Yet, though the tone is confoundedly serious here, there out of the blue comes Dennis Hopper's maniacal photojournalist, a steadfast Kurtz apostle, to lighten things up.
The performances in this amazing motion picture are simply tour de forces in every single aspect of the art of acting. Martin Sheen exudes all the unfathomable depths of his intellectually contemplative, poignantly resolute hero through both the mediums of voice-over narrative and sublime corporeality. He is nothing short of astounding. Then there's Brando, who, no matter who he is or what he's doing, cuts an unabashedly amazing figure on the screen. Whether you like him or not, it seems impossible to avert your attention from him whenever he's in view. In APOCALAYPSE NOW he truly becomes the embodiment of all that there is in the whole vast world to dread, confound and disinherit. He is the destination of the trip that everyone metaphorically takes, in some form or to some degree or other, down the winding river of life, cutting into the vast, pulsating heart of darkness. By Scott Litster.
