Reviews

He and co-star Dennis Hopper didn't get along, a typhoon wrecked most of the sets during filming, Sheen was dealing with alcoholism and even suffered a heart attack, among many other issues that put the film over budget, and drove Coppola to illness and multiple suicide attempts.

Aboard a river boat with a small crew (Laurence Fishburne, Sam Bottoms, Frederic Forrest, and Albert Hall), Willard ventures deeper and deeper into the country and scenes of madness.

Yet somehow, to me, Coppola lost his way and became another Kurtz, losing the thread, trying to piece together a third act from bits and pieces, shadows, insane babblings from Hopper and Brando, and allegorical meaning tying the story's unraveling to that of the Vietnam War itself.

The irony in Willard being sent to assassinate rogue Colonel Kurtz because he has gone insane and acquired a devoted army of followers to follow his every order, no matter what, is more than obvious when everyone he encounters are experiencing their own levels of insanity, while the crew on the boat...

Without trying to spoil anything for those who haven't seen the film, throughout Willard's journey on the boat, it becomes a possibility that Kurtz and Willard are past and future representations of one another in some way.

When I think of the greatest films ever made, I think of the films that fill me most with awe and reverence.

This is a 1979 movie so it's difficult to pass fair judgement about its originality, but the fact is several scenes are insipid, seemingly pointless and slightly confuse me about the real message that the movie is trying to convey.

Like all war films - although this is also a drama about the effects of war itself - it's dark.

Now quite a few people have debated whether this film is an anti war film or a glorification of war.

Francis Ford Coppola almost lost his mind, Martin Sheen almost died from a heart attack while filming, Marlon Brando showed up to the set in the Philippines without reading the script or the book it was based upon, Heart of Darkness.