The Horror... The Horror

Time to cross another one of the "big ones" off my list -- I recently watched Apocalyspse Now. (The original, not the lengthier "Redux" that Francis Ford Coppola recut in 2001.) I found the Vietnam movie to be a real mixed bag, with things to like and things to... well, be bored silly by.

It starts with the very premise of the film. A soldier played by Martin Sheen is ordered to travel up a river into forbidden territory to locate and kill an officer (played by Marlon Brando) who has gone crazy. Inherent in that concept is the idea of a steadily building tension as the soldier travels toward his destiny, as he has "side adventures" and grows more dreadful of what he'll find when he gets there -- and that's great. The problem is, some of those adventures along the way are too grand in and of themselves, such that after two hours' run time, nothing can possibly live up to all that set up.

Marlon Brando is interesting enough when you finally do get to him in the movie. But plenty of other things in the film have been far better up to that point. Chief on the list is Robert Duvall as a commanding officer far nuttier, in my opinion, than Brando's Colonel Kurtz ends up being. (Oddly, the film even briefly comments on this.) It's Duvall's character that wants to help two of his men catch some surfing in a hot battle zone, who delivers the famous ode to napalm speech that became an iconic bit of pop culture, who brings us the indelible merger of Wagnerian opera and fiery war that nearly everyone recognizes whether they know it came from this film or not. The energetic high point of the film has passed just 45 minutes into the film, when Duvall passes out of the movie; nothing afterward measures up.

Other episodes about the insanity and horrors of war land much stronger emotional punches than anything we see in the final act. Part of that is thanks to an interesting cast of characters on that boat, including one played by a very young Laurence Fishburne, at least a decade before anyone would know him by name. There's a scene about the abuse of their power as they search a local fishing boat, and another scene about an ambush that leaves them with casualties. Both are more effective that anything from the sequences in the last half hour, surrounding Kurtz and the crazy photo-journalist accompanying him (played by Dennis Hopper). It further deepens the feeling of a "top-loaded" movie.

Martin Sheen is effective in the main role, largely due to his narration. His voice-over is constant, and of a chillingly different tone than the speaking voice of his character when we actually talks to other characters -- it's pitched much lower, raspier, and unsettling. But as with everything else in the film, it eventually becomes too much, and it's not ultimately leading anywhere that great.

Whatever good things there are in the film are ultimately just spaced too far apart, thanks to the two-and-a-half hour length. (I can't imagine what it would have been like to watch the even longer "Redux." The film would have been improved if it had been edited shorter, not longer.) Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd had any war experience, but thankfully I have not. But then, in such a case, I'd probably not then think of war movies as entertainment.

I average it all out to a middle-of-the-road C grade. It's a seven-layer dip of a movie, where some of the layers are delicious, but inseparable from some that aren't.