Apocalypse Now

ORIGINAL leading man Harvey Keitel had a lucky escape when director Francis Ford Coppola fired him early-on in the production of his demented Vietnam War odyssey. Replacement Martin Sheen suffered such stress during the shoot he had a heart attack – but recovered and completed his role. A troubled movie, it drove its director near to bankruptcy and insanity and he made some daft comments about it, the dumbest being: “This isn’t a film about Vietnam. This film is Vietnam!” Still, Apocalypse Now is something to behold, from the mumbling genius of Marlon Brando’s reclusive colonel to the gung ho excess of Robert Duvall’s surfing soldier. Coppola, who had already made The Godfather I and II and The Conversation in the 1970s, left a part of himself in the jungle. Nothing he has done since can rival it in ambition or achievement.