Apocalypse Now - Renegade Cut 

I watched a snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor. It's my dream; it's my nightmare.

Apocalypse now is truly one of the greatest films ever made. Beautiful, horrifying, complex and layered. Its the best Vietnam movie ever made, because it really isn't a Vietnam movie at all. It's a movie about the duality of man and the madness of war and what war can do to a man or men. Truly a wonderful watch for any fan of movies.

What an amazing flick, Coppola is the best at telling morally ambiguous stories. I love when surfer dude steals the captain's surf board!

I think this may have became my favorite film of all time

I loved this movie, but it took me a long time to watch it in pieces, when I watch this I cry, cry hard because I was part of this, we were part of the nightmare and created it with great energy. It has never left me.

Love where this channel has ended up. Thank you, Leon, for keeping at it

Steeped in the darkest corridor of the psyche but on screen and imbued with rich poetry.

Thank you for making quality content and just a great thesis. I’m so thankful that you pointed out the parallels with The Odyssey! I just read Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS 3 days ago and today came across your video. You’re so right. This modernization of what was already a timeless story just quickened my realization that we not only share the potential for this primal evil, but in this film we can actually stare this horrific truth in the face in a contemporary setting, which makes us, I think, more aware that this duality in us is currently shaping our own world as we know it today.

Best analysis I've heard of "Apocalypse Now"; When we first see Willard in the hotel room in Saigon, he has just come back from the Kurtz mission. His memories of the mission drive him to suicide and he goes to hell, where he is condemned to re-live the mission for all eternity. I buy it.

Thank you for your insightful analysis of this film. It's one of my all time favorites.

It is more beautiful than any film or picture to ever be made, not because heavenly cracks of light appear through the darkness, but because the journey it takes the viewer on to look at themselves, and that is the experience of it all.

Beautiful! All Quiet on the Western Front the 1930 movie should be next

This was even more in-depth than I expected. Amazing work!

Really glad this came across my feed, finally, as it was quite good. I was obsessed with this film upon my first astounded experience of viewing it in 1979, and am gratified when someone can yet provide insights into it that I hadn’t considered. Great job.

This is easily one of the best RU-vid channels! I love all of your content

A top notch video essay about one of the best films ever made.

i can't tell you how much i enjoyed this. i first discovered your channel with the fargo analysis which was also quite brilliant. And there will be blood also! All the best. and keep going with this channel, it's fantastic.

Oh I've been waiting for this

Charlie don't surf.

Thank you for reviewing my favorite film. I feel that you got the essence of it, which -I suppose- is the passing of human beings through different moral "stages" that our civilization has established. But I think that your analysis could go a lot deeper than that, digging through characters and their symbolism throughout the journey in the Nung river. Not that I don't like what you did, I just feel that you could sometimes use more time to give depth instead of breadth, analyzing instead of enumerating concepts appearing in a film, much like you did with Tree of Life. That would really do the film justice. But in any case, keep up the good work! :)

Undoubtly the best apocalypse now review on youtube. That was awesome. My third favorite movie of all time.

I scan my budget, seeking loose ends that can be trimmed to save money. Patreon. 'Do I /really/ need to give to Renegade Cut?' Another episode releases and after watching it I wonder what made such a stupid idea pop into my head. Thank you for your essays.

I have to say this is gradually becoming my favourite channel. Good work keep up the high standard!

A film that I honestly always think about. It’s one of the biggest gifts a filmmaker has ever given to the public. A film that honestly is a summary of thousands of years of storytelling. Apocalypse Now will in thousands of years be able to be viewed the same way The Odyssey is. It’s another in the long series of timeless stories man has told to itself since the beginning. It’s fresh, yet oddly familiar. Honestly, this film and Come and See (which should get an analysis) are in my opinion the two best war films because their aim is higher than any war. They’re about the internal machinations of the psyche and how war twists, perverts and destroys innocence, sanity, morality and the old notions of duty to nation or any other institution. In short, Apocalypse Now is probably one of the greatest works of cinematic art America has produced. I have no qualms about comparing it to the best work of Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Ray, Rossellini, Mizoguchi, Lang and all of the other artistic masters of the medium. It proves that American film can reach that level. Maybe one day we’ll get back to that level. But for now, we have films like this and 2001 to always be proud of.

Awesome breakdown of an epic.

Excelent work!

Hello. Via random browsing I can across one of your renegade cuts and now I'm on my 5th. Instantly subscribed!

my favorite film

Thank you for this great review! This movie has captured me...

The cinematographer was a fucking genius, each colored smoke drop is another layer into the surreal

Please keep up your. great work. Utube (as of late) is a better film class than I paid for in college.

brilliant video

awesome analysis!

No Man’s Land (the tv series) is an unofficial adaptation of The Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, in my opinion.

They traveled deeper and deeper into and insane world. When I first saw this film in the theater, it had the ending with the village being blown up during the end credits. From what I hear, not all the prints had that at the end. And that ending is not on the copies that are out today. It’s an interesting moral point for debate. With Kurtz dead, should the cult of Kurtz be destroyed as well?

Came from Max Derrat’s channel. Liked your video.

Another movie that was partly inspired by The Heart of Darkness is Interstellar. Nolan's tribute to Apocalypse Now can be observed: in one of the opening shots - Willard walks towards the window after waking and sees Saigon, the devastated land; while in Interstellar Cooper too walks towards the window as he wakes up from a nightmare and sees the devastated land in dystopian future.

I like that you mentioned the T. S. Elliot poetry. Elliot's poem is called "The Wasteland", and is that exactly what Willard and the patrol boat crew are travelling into, a wasteland. A place where life is wasted and insanity rules. "Apocalypse Now" is a great and strangely enigmatic movie. Almost surreal. A masterpiece, though I've always found the film's ending a little abrupt. I wonder what will happen to Willard and Lance now? Will they survive? And if so, how will they ever cope with the horrors they have seen?! Thanks for another great video, Renegade Cut. Keep it up!

Good job!

Did you notice Kurtz also had the writing of Goethe? He is most famous for writing Faust, who sold his soul to the devil because he had already learned all that there was to learn from human beings.

What a great great film.

Illuminating, entertaining and a great analysis. Thank you. Now how about 'Transformers, The Last Knight'...... just kidding.

It makes me wonder that John Milius who was often called a warmonger wrote the screenplay for an anti-war movie.

Thanks you for this great analysis, Apocalypse Now is my second favorite movie of all time.

Another interesting thing in regards to the politics of the movie is that initially Coppola wanted George Lucas to direct the movie, and George of course supported the VC and was against US imperialism in general because that's what the Star Wars Rebels and Empire are each modeled after respectively. It's so strange to me that John Milius wrote the script for this, like lol the fucking Red Dawn guy? Crazy

Illuminated by thunder? Otherwise great thoughts on a masterpiece

Good academic staff. Hope it goes...

It is timeless.

This was a great analysis. The Redux version is the better version in my opinion.

RIGHT ON...JE

love ur vids! can u make more kubrick vids?

much better than some sophomoric nonsense i have heard on other channels

Great review. Here's hoping you review the last great Francis Ford Coppola movie "The Conversation".

One thing to keep in mind about Willard not trusting the officers he take orders from. He himself is a Captain in the Army (which implies he might command a company sized unit up to a hundred soldiers if such was the case) and someone who serves in Special Forces. He's not a draftee just waiting to go home, he's a career officer meaning he's in there for the long haul. His condemnations of the officers above him are more damning than someone from the ranks.

Question, how do the dissolves that form layers (mentioned at 5;13) give the sense that the soldiers are trapped? Is this super imposition a part of the idiom of film that has come to mean entrapment? I'm just curious because I have never looked at it that way before

The fog can also be a reference to something else. There was a dutch writer (Louis Couperus) who wrote a book (in 1900) called 'the hidden force' (A more literal translation would be the silent force) about how there was a mystical hidden force fighting against/resisting the Dutch colonialist invaders in the Dutch Indies. Paul Verhoeven once planned to make a movie out of this book.

Gary Oldman should play Kurtz in a remake of Hearts of Darkness !!

I could swear that I watched this over a year ago...

I do not know...

Addition: Oh sorry, I just heard that my point is adressed in the clip. I was little bit too overhasty.

YEP INTERESTING...JACK ENGLISH LOCATION MANAGER.."APOC NOW"

You should do Menace II Society

getting ptsd from that doors song

See it for yourself.

I'm a "conservative" ... but love your vids. We must giveaway Politics and become a ONE. We can desagree... but not hate.

This is a great review and RECOMMENDED to all fans of Apocalypse Now and film itself. The REAL LIFE Kurtz - the "real life" Kurtz was fellow Australian - Colonel barry Petersen. Barry Petersen was seconde by the Australain Army to the CIA in the Darlac province situated on the Cambodian border. Petersen immersed himself in the ways of the Montagnard tribespeople. Petersen successfully trained the Montagnard so successfully that they feared Petersen. The Viet Cong (VC) put a bounty on Petersen's head. Petersen did play "hit and run" all the way into Cambodia . The success to Petersen's efforts was due to his immersion in the culture. this upset the CIA and a high-ranking American officer allwegedly daod " what . .. no amercan can do what this guy has done ". The CIA then accused Barry Petersen of cultivation a personality cult. Top Australian Brass followed suit. They accuse Petersen of "gone troppo" which literally means gone mad. Petersen, like Coppola's Kurtz was white man being seduced by the jungle (from Apocalypse Now Captn Willard - that is where he took his orders from anyway) and becoming God-like. The real Kurtz (Petersen) dismisses this and stresses that his primary goal was to build an effective fighting force that would affect the Vietcong (VC) supply lines. Petersen was so successful that he disrupted the VC efforts; used VC tactics against them; attacked pro-VC villages and villagers by destroying crops and livestock AND rescued capturer Montagnard. 70% of what is in Captain Willard's dossiers from the movie Apocalypse Now is actually about Petersen. The Hollywood part of Kurtz was him being age 37 and the U.S. military training. Wow . . . as one can see it is art imitating life vice versa. TERMINATE with EXTREME PREJUDICE - as in the film, the real CIA wanted Petersen dead. Fellow CIA colleagues who liked Petersen and valued what he did warned Petersen to leave not only the province but Vietnam itself. WHY - Petersen refused to allow his small, yet highly effective tribesmen to join the mass assassination programme - Operation Phoenix. The Montagnard's did end up fighting for the Phoenix programme in a division of400 and 500 were ineffective. They were NOT trained in this manner - the Montgnard fought in groups of 20 or 40 and utilised guerrilla tactics. The U.S. officer who took over and listene to his masters failed. When he came up with a successful plan, it was the mirror image of Petersen's. In the interim many Montagnard deserted and worse defected to the VC/North Vietnamese. This was a huge coup for the North Vietnamese as they knew first hand of American, BUT in reality Australian Special Forces tactics. POSTSCRIPT - The Montagnard were treated badly after the war ended.

Oh da howa...

Don't know what you're talking about but its a good opportunity to watch some of the movie, which is what its all about.

This movie was focusing on being high on war

Early af

Modern day criticisms of old books "not going far enough" is doing a disservice to the work by forgoing context and time and applying modern ideals retroactively

The 1979 release, with the original final credits/compound destruction intact, was perfect. Then freaking Coppola started to tinker with it, and tinker with it more, and still more. The newer versions I refuse to watch.

Apocalypse Now IS Alice in Wonderland gone very very wrong

Aguirre, The Wrath of God is a slightly better film in my opinion.

Sorry,what was that?