Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now Movie Poster

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning".  Although Apocalypse Now was a drama (with some action) released in August of 1979, we include it here because it continued to play at theaters well into 1980.  The movie starred Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin Willard, Robert Duvall as Bill Kilgore, Marlin Brando as Walter Kurtz, Harrison Ford as Colonel Lucas, and a number of other big names like Dennis Hopper and Laurence Fishburn.  The film was a success with critics and a huge money maker.

Apocalypse Now was essentially a contemporary interpretation of "The Heart of Darkness" from a Vietnam war perspective.  Captain  Willard (Sheen) is on a mission.  He must travel up the Nung River and assassinate the renegade  Special Forces Colonel Kurtz (Brando), who has gone mad and commanding his own force of native Vietnamese.

After hooking up with a crew of misfit, drug using soldiers, Willard fights to keep things together as the crew runs into various obstacles that they do not handle well.  Enemy combatants begin picking off the crew until only three are left, and eventually they get to Kurtz's lair which is filled with dead bodies and heads mounted on spears.  Willard is captured and eventually is coached by Kurtz in the rights and wrongs of humanity.  In the end, Willard does kill Kurtz, and the villagers allow Willard to leave unhindered.