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Army Captain Benjamin Willard. Played by Martin Sheen. A U.S. special forces assassin and the protagonist of the film. Willard acts as our eyes and ears, passively observing the surrounding action and rarely participating. He is receptive, not reactive, and identifies increasingly with his target, Kurtz.
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Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore delivers this line to...
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Apocalypse Now (1979), one of the most important films to...
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Apocalypse Now opens in Saigon in 1968. Army captain and...
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The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane.
Thus, from the opening scene Sheen portrays Willard as a man changed irreversibly by war. He managed to leave it physically but could not free his mind. Now he is back, abandoning all ideas of home, resigned to and eager for a return to combat. Willard’s behavior is at times infuriatingly passive.
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
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Captain Benjamin L. Willard is the main protagonist of the 1979 epic psychological war film Apocalypse Now. He is based on the character Marlow from the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. He was portrayed by the legendary actor Martin Sheen.
In 1969, Willard was ordered by command to journey up the Nung river and assassinate Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. He boards a PBR Street Gang led by Chief George Phillips, and accompanied by Lance, Chef, and Mr. Clean.
Later, Willard rendezvous with Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore to discuss going upriver. Though reluctant at first, Kilgore accepts when he takes an interest in Lance, who is a surfer. Willard witnesses Kilgore commit several war crimes, including attacking a Vietnamese village filled with defenceless civilians and ravaging the village with napalm. Disturbed by Kilgore’s warmongering and bloodlust, he and his crew sneak away unbeknownst to Kilgore.
Willard and his crew later stop off at a Playboy Bunnies’ Stadium in Hou Phat held to entertain US troops. Willard angrily demands that fuel be given for his boat before the show begins. The show, though entertaining at first, soon erupts into violence, with Willard and his men being forced to leave. They continue their journey up the river.
During their upriver journey, Willard’s crew meet a small boat full of Vietnamese citizens. Suspicious of their motives, Clean fires at the boat, killing all but a young woman. The young woman turns out to simply having wanted to protect her pet puppy, who Lance soon adopts as his own. The woman, though wounded, is still alive, and the crew demand she be taken to hospital. Willard, not wanting to be deterred from his mission, callously shoots her dead.
At nightfall, the group approached the Do Lung Bridge outpost where everyone has gone insane. The next day, Lance sets off a smoke grenade, causing a camoflauged enemy to fire at the group, resulting in Mr. Clean's death. Further upriver, natives attack the group with spears, and Chief is impaled. Willard suffocates Chief when he tries to impale him.
Willard finally arrives at Kurtz's hideout where they find some US Army men who have joined Kurtz's cause. After being tortured by Kurtz's tribe for several days, Willard enters the temple and hacks Kurtz to death with a machete. After Willard emerges from the temple with Kurtz's belongings, the tribe bows down to him. Willard then gets back on the boat with Lance and they motor away.
•Martin Sheen received critical acclaim for his role as Captain Willard.
•Martin Sheen actually suffered a heart attack amidst filming Apocalypse Now and almost died. Sheen miraculously survived and considered this moment a turning point in his life, turning away from his previous alcoholic and hedonistic lifestyle and mellowing as a result.
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Get the scoop on the cast of Apocalypse Now. Find out who played Captain Benjamin Willard and Colonel Walter Kurtz. Discover the actors behind this epic war movie.
Apocalypse Now: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. With Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest. A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god.
