Apocalypse Now(1979)
Lionsgate Aug 15, 1979 | Limited
A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god.
Releases
1979 Re-release (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)) | Aug 15, 1979
1987 Re-release (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)) | Aug 28, 1987
Apocalypse Now Redux (Miramax) | Aug 3, 2001
Original Release | Aug 15, 2019
2022 Re-release (Rialto Pictures) | Aug 12, 2022
2025 Re-release (Rialto Pictures) | Jun 20, 2025
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Box Office Results
All Releases (6)
$96,074,376
$9,072,167
$105,150,841
$118,558
$193,699
$312,257
Current Showtimes
Your Location or
(U.S. Only)
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English,French,Vietnamese
Summaries
Plot Summary
- U.S. Army Captain and special operations veteran Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) has returned from action to Saigon where he drinks heavily and destroys his hotel room. Intelligence officers Lt. General Corman (G. D. Spradlin) and Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford) approach him with an assignment: Willard must follow the Nung River into the remote Cambodian jungle, find rogue US Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) and kill him. The officers there tell him that U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz is waging a brutal war against NVA, Viet Cong, and Khmer Rouge forces without permission from his commanders. He is based at a remote jungle outpost in eastern Cambodia, where he commands American, Montagnard, and local Khmer militia troops. These troops view him as a demigod. Willard is ordered to "terminate Kurtz's command... with extreme prejudice."Willard joins a Navy PBR commanded by George "Chief" Phillips (Albert Hall) and crewmen Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), Jay "Chef" Hicks (Frederic Forrest) and Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller (Laurence Fishburne). Before reaching the coastal mouth of the Nùng, they rendezvous with the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment-a helicopter-borne air assault unit of the elite 1st Cavalry Division, commanded by reckless Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall).Kilgore is initially inattentive, as he has not received word about their mission through normal channels. Kilgore befriends Johnson as both are keen surfers. When Willard suggests the Viet Cong-filled coastal mouth of the Nung River, Kilgore accepts due to the surfing conditions there. After napalm strikes and Ride of the Valkyries playing over the chopper loudspeakers, the beach is taken and Kilgore orders others to surf it amid enemy fire. Resisting Kilgore's attempts to convince Lance to surf with him on the newly conquered beach, Willard gathers the sailors to board the PBR and continue on their mission.Slowly making their way upriver, Willard partially reveals his orders to the Chief to convince him that the mission is important and should proceed despite the difficulties they've encountered. Tension arises as Willard insists on the priority of his mission over the Chief's usual patrol objectives.Willard sifts through files of Kurtz, learning he was a model officer and possible future general, a top soldier in the field. He is struck by the mid-career sacrifice Kurtz made by leaving a prestigious Pentagon assignment to join Special Forces, with no prospect of advancing beyond the rank of colonel. Back in 1964 after returning from a tour of duty in South Vietnam, the 38-year-old Kurtz had eschewed the promotion, applying several times for Airborne training that he should've been too old to complete and had sent a report to his superiors about the war that was deemed classified. In other voice-over narration by Willard, Kurtz returned to South Vietnam in 1966 as a member of the Special Forces for another combat tour, which his fighting methods won victories against the enemy Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, but also drew criticism from his superior officers. By the late summer of 1968, Kurtz' combat patrols were coming under frequent ambush which ended in November 1968 after Kurtz ordered his men to summarily execute four high ranking South Vietnamese Intelligence officials who he suspected were double agents for the Viet Cong. Despite the fact that the four executed Vietnamese were indeed revealed to be double agents, the US Army charged Kurtz with murder for taking matters into his own hands instead of going through proper channels which resulted in Kurtz and his Special Forces/South Vietnamese army fleeing into Cambodia.Navigating upstream, the crew encounters a tiger and later visit a supply depot USO show featuring Playboy Playmates. The crew search a civilian sampan they come across, but Mr. Clean snaps and kills almost all on board, while Willard coldly shoots an injured survivor to prevent any delay of his mission.At a remote U.S. Army outpost, Willard and Lance seek information on what is upriver and receive a dispatch bag containing official and personal mail. Unable to find any commanding officer, Willard orders the Chief to continue. As the boat continues up the river, Willard learns from another dossier brought to him by a courier that the missing commanding officer, Captain Colby (Scott Glenn), was sent on an earlier mission to kill Kurtz. He'd sent a scrawled letter back to his family telling his wife to give up any hope of his return. Due to the disturbing nature of the letter, the Army had told his family he was simply missing. Lance and Chef are continually under the influence of drugs and Lance becomes withdrawn, smearing his face with camouflage paint.The next day the boat is fired upon by an unseen enemy in the trees, killing Mr. Clean and turning Chief hostile toward Willard. Later, they are ambushed again, by Montagnard warriors. They return fire and Chief is impaled with a spear, who then tries to kill Willard by pulling him onto it but dies from his wound.Afterwards, Willard confides in the remaining Chef and Lance about his mission, and they reluctantly agree to continue upriver where they see the coastline is littered with bodies. The PBR arrives at Kurtz's outpost, a Khmer temple teeming with Montagnards and strewn with remains of victims. Willard takes Lance with him to the village, leaving Chef behind with orders to call an airstrike on the village if he does not return.In the camp, the two men are met by a manic freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), who explains that Kurtz's great philosophical skills inspire his people to follow him. As they proceed, they see bodies and severed heads scattered about the nearby temple that serves as Kurtz's living quarters, and encounter the missing Captain Colby, who is nearly catatonic.Willard is brought before Kurtz in the darkened temple, where Kurtz derides him as an errand boy, after which he is locked in a bamboo cage. Meanwhile Chef calls in the airstrike but is kidnapped. Bound to a post, Willard screams helplessly as Kurtz drops Chef's severed head into his lap. After some time, Willard is released and given the freedom of the compound. Kurtz lectures him on his theories of war, humanity and civilization while praising the ruthlessness and dedication of the Viet Cong. Kurtz had reached his breaking point some years before when he'd led a mission to inoculate the children of a small village for polio. Soon after completing that mission, Kurtz' unit was called back by one of the villagers where he found that the Viet Cong had come and hacked off every child's arm that had been injected with the vaccine. Kurtz believed that if he'd had a large legion of men who would go to such extremes that he could end the war itself. He asks Willard to tell his son everything about him in the event of his death.That night, as the villagers ceremonially slaughter a water buffalo, Willard enters Kurtz's chamber as Kurtz is making a recording and attacks him with a machete. Lying mortally wounded on the ground; Kurtz whispers his final words "The horror ... the horror ..." before dying. Willard descends the stairs from Kurtz's chamber and drops his weapon. The villagers do likewise and allow Willard to take Lance by the hand and lead him to the boat. The two of them sail away as airstrikes are launched on the village and Kurtz's final words echo.
Storyline
- It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz, whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him. Willard, sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore, head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group which eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance and Chef reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost, beyond the Do Lung Bridge. Now, after becoming prisoners of Kurtz, will Willard & the others be able to fulfill their mission? — Derek O'Cain In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, Captain Benjamin Willard is resting in his hotel room, waiting for a mission to be given to him by the United States Army. A mission that no one else has ever been given before. The mission is to travel upriver to assassinate a colonel, who's gone AWOL and acts like a demi-god to a group of tribal natives in the jungle. Taking the mission for what it is, Willard travels upriver along with a ragtag group of American soldiers, some of which are called by their nicknames. Along the way, several obstacles get in their way of the mission including a deadly encounter with a tiger and heavy enemy fire at a strategic bridge. As Willard nears the end of his mission, he soon finds himself reeling in the horrors and sanity of war itself as he confronts the colonel face to face in which Willard's true nature begins to emerge slowly. — blazesnakes9 The worn out and fatigued U.S Army captain Benjamin L. Willard is sent on a harrowing and surreal mission into the deepest parts of the jungle during the height of the Vietnam War, with the objective of eliminating the rogue Walter E. Kurtz, a Green Beret officer who has completely lost his sanity. Together with a small squad of soldiers, Willard sets out by boat to travel upriver towards Kurtz' base. But Willard soon eerily realizes that the closer he gets to his target, the more he seems himself in him. Everything could happen on the mission, but one thing is clear; if successful, Willard will not return the same. — goddangwatir At the height of the Vietnam war, experienced soldier and covert operative Captain Benjamin Willard withdraws from a drunken and disheveled state to accept his most daring and secretive mission yet. His objective is to travel down the Nyung river by boat and assassinate a Green Beret Colonel named Kurtz who has gone insane deep within the Jungle, and leads his men and a local tribe as a god on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory. As Willard and the crew of a Navy PR boat unaware of his objective embark on their journey from the security of civilization into the untamed depths of the jungle, Willard confronts not only the same horrors and hypocrisy that pushed the level headed Colonel Kurtz over the edge into an abyss of insanity, but the primal violence of human nature and the darkness of his own heart. — redcommander27 1 more All
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