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Critics Consensus: Francis Ford Coppola's haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary.
Critic Consensus: Francis Ford Coppola's haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary.
All Critics (85) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (82) | Rotten (3) | DVD (26)
It has coherence, truthfulness, and conviction-up to a point.
It's the cumulative effect generated by mixing richly portentous imagery with absurdly portentous prose, starkly portentous sound and flatulently portentous music.
Certainly, no movie in history has ever presented stronger proof that war is living hell.
A film of pure sensation, dazzling audiences with light and noise, laying bare the stark horror - and unimaginable thrill - of combat.
Alternately a brilliant and bizarre film, Francis Coppola's four year 'work in progress' offers the definitive validation to the old saw, 'war is hell.'
...it's wonderful to see this hallucinatory folly-cum-near masterpiece again on the big screen.
The film holds together well enough until it reaches its final muddle, and it has scenes and moments unequaled in recent European or American movies.
Coppola says he wanted to get to the moral issues that are behind all wars, but I think he has done no more than demonstrate the obvious-that in Vietnam we fought a bad war.
as Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) heads up river to assassinate Kurtz, his increasing admiration for the man is offset by his disgust at the scenes of more authorised insanity (and hypocrisy) all around.
Good or bad, success or failure, this is a magnificent, gonzo piece of cinema, and the art form would be far lesser if it had never existed.
An indelible statement on the lunacy of war.
Coppola's vivid-as-an-LSD-trip take on the madness of war is a one of a kind film, a mess-terpiece held together by sheer audacity and imagination.
Enjoyed the first two thirds of the movie more than the final third, but it was still very well done and well acted. Fat Brando is always nice, too.
Super Reviewer
Coppola's all-time classic is an intense Vietnam War nightmare that sets out to portray with some of the most spectacular visuals the unfathomable horror and madness of war, following a man as he goes further and further in a harrowing descent into the very heart of darkness.
The way the film is shot is as searing as the Vietnamese heat; few films can compare to the intensity and quality of picturesque way it is shot accompanied with its great writing, and legendary direction.
A black ops assassin is sent into the jungles of South East Asia to hunt down and kill a one-time career military golden boy who has turned renegade and began operating outside of the chain of command. Francis Ford Coppola's dream-like journey through the horrors and absurdities of the Vietnam war, like 2001: A Space Odyssey before it, is more an experience than a story with any kind of strict middle, beginning and end. It's not the destination that's important. It's chock full of memorable performances from Martin Sheen's Willard who becomes fascinated with his target and shares more in common with him than he'd like to admit, through to Brando's towering presence as the rarely seen, shadow enshrouded god of war who has tired of the hypocritical "rules of engagement". Not forgetting Kilgore, who despite the long and illustrious career of Robert Duvall, will always be the character he is remembered for and the Ride Of The Valkyries sequence is one of the all-time greats of cinema. It has so many haunting, nightmarish images and the whole film is absolutely stunning to look at from beginning to end. Some may be left bemused by the rather free-form approach but it is certainly the most creative and provocative war film ever made.
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