Apocalypse Now, motion picture about the Vietnam War (1959-1975) patterned after Joseph Conrads novella Heart of Darkness (1902). Released in 1979, the film won the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival and Academy Awards for cinematography and sound. A crew of five men led by Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) travel up the Mekong River on a mission to find and kill a renegade United States officer, Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz has set up a tightly controlled, violent kingdom for himself in a riverside village. Willard meets with Kurtz and kills him, but not before his men are affected by the horrors of war and Kurtzs psychotic character. An extraordinary film without parallel in it's genre