Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 4.0, Dolby Surround
Languages: English, Italian, German
Subtitles: 7 languages available
Widescreen: 2.00:1
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: £19.99
Extras : Theatrical Trailer, Excerpts from the original
theatrical programme, Destruction of the Kurtz Compound with director's
commentary
Director:
Francis Ford Coppola
(Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Conversation, Dementia 13, Finian's Rainbow, The Godfather 1-3, Jack,
John Grisham's The Rainmaker, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish)
Producer:
Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay:
John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola
Music:
Carmine Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola
Cast:
Captain Benjamin L. Willard: Martin Sheen
Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore: Robert Duvall
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: Marlon Brando
Chef (Hicks): Frederic Forrest
Chief Phillips: Albert Hall
Lance Johnson: Sam Bottoms
Mr. Clean (Miller): Laurence Fishburne
The Photojournalist: Dennis Hopper
Colonel Lucas: Harrison Ford
Colby: Scott Glenn
Bizarre and captivating are two words I
can use to describe Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's
contribution to the Vietnam war films which has neither opening, nor
official closing credits.
Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) is back in the jungle for
another tour of duty. He learns that the demented Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
(Marlon Brando) is about to be arrested after he ordered the execution
of some Vietnamese intelligence agents who he believed were double agents.
Willard's mission, should he choose to accept it, is to kill Kurtz but the
guy is a law unto himself and it's not going to be a walk in the park.
There's many a poigniant scene here such as when hard-nosed Sgt. Kilgore
(Robert Duvall) takes to bombing the Vietnamese by organising the
gunships to charge to the strains of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries
to a scene a little later where he utters the memorable phrase of "I love
the smell of napalm in the morning".
Martin Sheen had a heart-attack while filming, Dennis Hopper takes the
role of a photojournalist on the side of Kurtz and there are appearances for
a much-younger Harrison Ford and Larry Fishburne.
Songs of the era are included as is the controversial sacrificing of a cow as
Kurtz is murdered. This scene was left in because it's part of a real-life
ritual, despite the BBFC's tendancy not to portray cruelty to animals.
I have a beef with the picture, but the principal problem is not Paramount's
fault. Originally shown in cinemas at 2.35:1, any print intended for viewing
at home has been cropped to 2.00:1 at the insistance of cinematographer
Vittorio Storaro. Most scenes are still fine, but nothing can beat the
original ratio and to this day I've never understood his decision.
I have seen a portion of this in the full widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 on
ZDF TV. "Ich liebe die smell der naplam im morgen", anyone?
At times there are some scratches on the print and it looks a little grainy
at times, but the anamorphic presentation helps.
The average bitrate is 5.91b/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.
The sound has been remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 for English only. A very
good job has been made of it with explosions and gunfire making the best use
of your speakers and when Wagner gets going, there's some great rear-sound
action as the choppers approach.
Extras :
There's only a handful of extras, but what's here is definitely welcome,
starting with a near-four-minute Theatrical trailer in anamorphic
16:9 widescreen.
The end credits are counted as an extra - and appear in two forms - because,
believe it or not, for those who saw the original 70mm cinematic presentation
the film ended with Willard sailing off into the distance and a 1979 copyright
notice appearing onscreen. As the customers left the cinema they were handed
a brochure with printed credits.
The Excerpts from the original theatrical programme comprise of a brief
intro by Coppola followed by selected highlights from the shooting log
over the 238 days of filming.
When I saw the film at the Keele Film Society in the early 1990s, the print
we saw had the "apocalyptic end sequence", with the closing credits played
over the top. This version was later released on video. It's this scene that
features as the extra, Destruction of the Kurtz Compound with director's
commentary, without the credits on top though. You only see those over
Coppola's alternate ending that he doesn't like to call an alternate ending.
It's just a plain black screen.
For such a long film, the chaptering is woefully inadequate with a mere 19
to the film. The main menu is animated with a copy of the film's opening
and the helicopter crossing the scene before the jungle is bombed.
For the English dialogue we have a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack,
the Italians get Dolby Digital 4.0 - so no centre channel nor subwoofer for
them - and the Germans get plain surround. Subtitles are available in English
(and hard of hearing), Danish,
Dutch, German, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish.
Francis Ford Coppola is certainly a thorough and unconventional director
and the film is a must-see, if only the once, for many of its key scenes,
but the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts.
It's one to double-bill with Tartan Video's Hearts of Darkness: A Film-Maker's
Apocalypse, a 92-minute 'making of' which is available on video but has
yet to make it onto DVD.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
