Apocalypse Now

I'm watching Apocalypse Now to kill two birds with one stone: write a review in this class and be able to see the whole movie so i can get exempt from my english exam. I wasn't expecting the movie to be 3 hours long but i watched it anyway. The movie, like many others i've seen this year, is set in the Vietnam war. This is a really ripe setting for a lot of movies because of the social and political angst that was going on at the time in contrast to the counterculture back home. On my initial viewing, the movie had just lost me. A lot of stuff isn't really explained, but i understand why i'm supposed to be watching it having just read Heart of Darkness. This movie was obviously made in response to it and features similar themes, from aesthetic similarities to plot similarities to philosophical ideas and morals being projected through the characters and the situation they find themselves in. People like to say that the whole movie is made worth it just from the ending, and while the ending is spectacularly eerie, i think it pairs really well as a follow-up to reading heart of darkness. I would recommend this movie to anyone who has read heart of darkness and liked it, but not to anyone with a short attention span.