Colonel Kurtz: Marlon Brando	Lt. Colonel Kilgore: Robert Duvall
Captain: Willard: Martin Sheen	Chief Phillips: Albert Hall
Lance: Sam Bottoms	Mr. Clean: Laurence Fishburne
Freelance Photographer: Dennis Hopper	Director: Francis Ford Coppola

30 Second Bottom Line: An American army officer in Vietnam is ordered to track down a fellow officer who has gone "native" and end his mission with "extreme prejudice." The intended victim is so deep in the jungle that he's left Vietnam and entered Cambodia.

Story Line: Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) is a third generation West Point Graduate being groomed for high military command. Kurtz follows orders well, until he becomes so committed to his mission that he loses touch with reality. He starts to take matters into his own hands by assassinating perceived enemies without checking with his command authority. A covert secret assignment is given to Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) to go up river, find and terminate Colonel Kurtz. It's a mission that is never officially given and as they say, "never happened."

Lt. Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) is to assist Willard and his team to travel deep up river, into the jungle. As the small gunboat navigates the murky river we get the feel of being on a one way street, where we missed the "no outlet" sign. Kilgore attacks villages along the way with the flair of a Hollywood production. He knows that he will assume casualties, but he has an air of invincibility, as if he's not worried about his safety even though he is very much in the thick of things.

Kilgore is so far out there mentally that in the middle of a battle, when he learns that one of his soldiers is a famous surfer, he has him demonstrate his skills on the waves. When the dust settles from the battle, he orders in steaks and they have a beach party as if they are in Malibu or Acapulco. Even with these distractions, Kilgore never wavers or loses focus on why he is here, and when the morning comes, he's working to get Willard's team onto the river moving toward their mission. It's at this point that he exhales the famous line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." The big battle they experienced the day before was just something you had to get past to head toward Cambodia. To Kilgore it's like fighting heavy traffic into downtown on the way to work¾ it's routine and you learn to live with it.

This ominous and twisted river holds many secrets. One that everyone remembers from Apocalypse Now is the near riot that occurs when the Playboy Bunnies twitch their tails as the modern version of Bob Hope entertaining the troops. Unlike many director's cut releases where nothing much different really happens, in Apocalypse Now Redux, the additions add a few more layers that flesh out the original story in more meaningful detail.

Further up the river, skipper Phillips (Albert Hall), a by the book leader, at the insistence of Capt.Willard, stops at a medevac camp where things are in chaos. The Commanding Officer was killed and no one has taken his place. The helicopter transporting the Playboy Bunnies is out of fuel and is stranded. The titillating tease of the Playboy show is replaced with the women's desperate situation and wanting to get out of the jungle. There might even be a deal in the making if Willard trades fuel for some "up close and personal" female entertainment.

Lance (Sam Bottoms) is on the fringe as he finds a way to use his surfing skills to ski behind the gunboat, as if he's simply on vacation in an exotic locale. Clean (a teenage Laurence Fishburne who was then known as Larry) captures the innocence of sending boys off to war.

There are casualties, or I should say, deaths of Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers. As the troops start to thin, the second major change in the film, sharpening the political edge that the original Apocalypse Now did not have, comes when the cadre meets the owners of a French plantation that produces rubber. These French are fond of saying that they made something from nothing, so the land is theirs. This touches upon a meaning of colonialism not quite like I've seen before. Yes, it is true that the land was not industrialized before the French came. Because they could make money from these efforts, they decided that the land indeed belongs to them.

The French who remained are defiant and want to maintain their way of life with fancy dinners and as many luxuries of Paris as they can hack out of the jungle. This shift in consciousness, the manners displayed and the one night stand that Willard has with a French widow played by Aurore Clement, make the final leg of the journey to meet Kurtz much more dramatic-and erotic.

Colonel Kurtz's world is one of deep shadows, inhabited by a mad man; but he is not a fool. He knows why Willard has come. Kurtz's behavior is furtive and his landscape is strewn with severed heads. You are struck by the insanity, even from a distance. Brando is not just in dark shadows talking like a crazy man, as was the case in the original film. Here, after Willard is released first from a bamboo cage and later from a hot, metal shipping container, Kurtz sits down like a happy Buddha and reads to Willard from Time Magazine about just how well the war is going. It's not just the communists that have a propaganda machine.

Kurtz then says to Willard, "You're free now to wander about the compound. Don't try to escape or you'll be shot." It's as if Kurtz needs to be in control of his own suicide by freeing Willard.

Tell Me More About It: This is a film that has taken me by surprise more than any other so far this year. I saw Apocalypse Now in 1979 and other than the fact that it felt as if it was too close in time to the real war that it depicted, I figured the main difference would be that it would be easier to look at now that more time has passed. The first time I saw it I was with a good friend from Washington, DC who had more than a casual connection with Vietnam. We first met at Fort Lewis, Washington shortly after he got his commission in Infantry and I was commissioned in Armor (tanks).

I had arrived at Ft. Lewis first, and by the grace of God, I did not go to Vietnam. This was unusual for two reasons. I was a combat-trained officer and it was during the height of the war. Very few combat officers did not go to Vietnam. The only officers I knew who did not go to Vietnam during this time were those who got assignments in Europe right after graduating from OCS (Officers Candidates School) and my best friend, also Armor, who was stationed in Ft. Polk, LA. My Ft. Lewis friend was destined for the war zone, while my friend at Ft. Polk and I stayed stateside. When we met, the wife of my infantry buddy was pregnant with a baby who has now become a wonderful young lady. She is the one that I spoke of in the review The Road Home, who blended the handmade soap.

I'm digressing but it's relevant, I think. It is to me because this was an extremely stressful and emotional time in my life. Lots of things happened in 1968, among them the riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago and the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

After the war was over, we went to visit our friends in DC and for reasons I don't remember, just the two of us went to see Apocalypse Now. I recall vividly the strange sensation of sitting in the theater and wondering if I was a less worthy person because he went to Vietnam and came back and I did not even go. He saw more than his share of firefights and while not necessarily the better or worse for it, was now a different man. In what way no one really knows. But one might say that it was an experience that he could have done without. Coppola said of this picture, "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam." My friend said very casually as we left the theater, "That's the way it was." I took that to mean not the events themselves per se, but the mindset of the Americans, and the people in Vietnam.

When I think about this film I realize, that for me anyway, my greatest films are the ones where I remember where I was, who I was with and the theater I was in. That way I know it was a major emotional or life altering experience. It's films like this that made me a movie critic.

How can a remake of a movie made over 20 years ago be one of, if not the best film of the year just by adding some scenes edited out of the original? There are still a lot of movies left to see this year, but when it's all said and done, I'd be surprised if this one is not in my top 10, possibly # 1. Some movies are best described with two words, "heavy duty."

War movies are dramatic by definition. Some people say that films about war are antiwar because of the pain and suffering. I tend to disagree with that, as most war movies have someone as a hero, which sends a message that it might not be as bad as it seems, if you are on the winning team. Films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Dead Presidents and The Deerhunter tend to deglamorize war, while a film like Pearl Harbor makes heroes of many.

Apocalypse Now Redux is surreal, dropping us into a jungle with surfing soldiers, Playboy Bunnies, a French plantation and the strange world inhabited by Kurtz. While it portrays how many people are affected by the conflict, nothing sums it up better than Ernest Hemingway when he said, "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."

Marlon Brando: The Score	Robert Duvall: Gone in Sixty Seconds
Martin Sheen: O	Albert Hall: Beloved
Sam Bottoms: Sins of the Father	Laurence Fishburne: Once in the Life
Dennis Hopper: Edtv	Francis Ford Coppola: The Virgin Suicides