Apocalypse Now

A very flawed film. Coppola manages to astonish with the excellent production and cinematography, but the film tries to be more ambitious with story and character. It takes the mission of a Captain hunting down a crazed Colonel and makes it into a mythic telling of the chaos of Vietnam and the 70s. Coppola handles the hefty subject with trendy cultural references that show what decade the war is in. The problem is that these references also become the extent of the symbolism and meaning in the film. Robert Duvall's caricature performance of a crazed surfing happy colonel is suppose to be meaningful. For me it should have been an anecdote. The film is suppose to dig at meaning and larger ideas, but features general 70s chiq only. The redux version includes a French plantation scene that does get specific, but structurally it takes the film too far off base. Marlon Brando plays the infamous Colonel Kurtz to an exaggerrated level. The similarity his performance has is that it encompasses the mythic nature of the film, but his character offers dope poetics that shows he is insane and nothing more. The film boggles so much that it even isn't personally revealing. The excellent production is almost convincing that the half ass story is actually good.