Martin Sheen in a sequence from the new 4k restoration of 'Apocalypse Now: Final Cut.'
Chas Gerretsen/Nederlands Fotomuseum/Zoetrope Corp.

Paul Thompson
17 August 2019,

In the 40 years since Francis Ford Coppola's groundbreaking film came out, Hollywood has given up on capturing the depravity of war.

Forty years after its release, it remains a towering aesthetic achievement, gorgeously shot by the Italian legend Vittorio Storaro: a series of portraits that look like they’re smoldering, nearly-static images of a blue river cutting through a jungle that’s onyx-black, tracking shots of airplanes that ignore gravity completely.

Apocalypse Now contains within it nearly every feeling and fear about what the war did to those living in Vietnam and those Americans who came home from Vietnam––or didn’t. And yet the points it makes about war, about not only its hellishness but its total psychological hold over combatants and bystanders alike, is more pointed than any such arguments made in popular American films today.

The point here is not that Hollywood has failed consumers or fallen short of a moral obligation. The point is that Hollywood is reflecting the new, mainstream American attitude toward war: that it is bloodless and distant, waged by volunteers and shell companies in deserts that most of us will never see. For those who hold the most economic and political power in American society, war has been abstracted in a way it never was before.

full https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/xwez ... sary-essay

Tropic Thunder!

clutchcargo wrote: ↑Sat Aug 17, 2019 2:44 pm The Director's cut version had a number of extra scenes that unfortunately were cut from the original release coz it was considered too long. This made it a much better, epic movie compared to the original disjointed one. I'll have to check whether this 4K Final cut has any more in it..

The Director's Cut was too long, this Final Cut has trimmed it down a bit.

Apocalypse Now Redux was superb.
I saw the original theatrical release on a double date and enjoyed it a lot more than my date...
I loved Redux edition because it included wonderful scenes...surfing...stealing Air Cav napalm loving dude's prized board and hiding out as the copters searched for them...tough shit Robert Duvall.
finding the Playboy Bunnies and their copter out of fuel and exchanging fuel for Playmate of the year pussy....and my favorite cut scene ...the French plantation owners who did not want to give up their property and Sheen smokes opium and fucks a French lady whose husband was killed defending the property...
I wondered upon landing in Phnom Penh if anyone who went to The Heart of Darkness bar knew where the name came from..
As far as it being the best war film ever made.
I sure don't agree with that bold statement.
I don't even think it was the best Vietnam/Cambodia war film ever made....since the Colonel was in Cambodia...
I did not like Full Metal Jacket...so, it is not my favorite..
I loved Remember the Spartans...a lower budget movie with Burt Lancaster..
There are many great war movies...sad to say.
Movies with actors who were actually in the military.
As far as hollywood goes...
nothing comes out of hollywood worth a shit...
these days...
Give me black white movies like The Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge, The War Lover or Hell is for Heroes any day...King Rat.
Bridge ON the River Kwai...far superior..
I find these final cuts sometimes to be a let down.
But, at least, you get what the Director wanted you to see.
I am buying a new sony blu ray that will play any dvd or blu ray 110 or 220 plug...
This 4D stuff is new...
My sound bar I picked up in PP is decent for my apartment...not like my surround sound in USA...
I need 2 wireless speakers to get it there..
The Horror...The Horror...The Horror

I wondered upon landing in Phnom Penh if anyone who went to the Heart of Darkness bar knew where the name came from?

Sure, I'd read the book, and knew the owner has also opened Apocalypse Now bar in HCM, and there was a huge frames photo of Tony Poe just inside the door. He was supposedly one of the inspirations for Kurtz in the movie.

BTW, I meant Redux when I wrote Director's Cut above.

fat Marlon Brando ruins the film. Surely Hamburger Hill is the greatest Vietnam war film.

Sure it was a cult classic yet a far fetched grasp of reality!