War movie dubbed ‘greatest of all time’ is now available to stream

War movie dubbed ‘greatest of all time’ is now available to stream Joel Harley Published November 30, 2025 12:00pm Share this article via whatsappShare this article via xCopy the link to this article.Link is copiedShare this article via facebook Comment now Comments Martin Sheen stars as out-of-his-depth soldier Benjamin Willard (Picture: Getty Images)

A classic movie dubbed by many ‘the greatest war film of all time’ is currently streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video and Channel 4 in the UK.

Produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the 1979 film Apocalypse Now is widely regarded as one of the best war movies ever made.

Set during the Vietnam War, it stars Martin Sheen as Captain Willard, an unsuspecting soldier tasked with finding and executing AWOL Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando.

In doing so, Willard embarks upon an often mind-bending odyssey through war-torn South Vietnam and Cambodia.

The notoriously difficult shoot paid off, with Apocalypse Now scoring the Academy Award for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe and Bafta upon its release.

With the film now streaming on Amazon Prime and Channel 4, many viewers are taking their journey into the heart of darkness for the first time and taking to social media to share their thoughts.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now is set during the Vietnam War (Picture: Getty Images) The film stars Marlon Brando as the elusive Colonel Kurtz (Picture: Getty Images)

Writing on X, Motem wrote: ‘I watched Apocalypse Now for the first time ever last night, what an amazing film!’

Meanwhile, LaurentLLH called it ‘more than a film: a total artistic expérience – More Than a masterpiece – one of the best artworks of humanity!’

‘Apocalypse Now, the best war film of all time,’ said zetxy10, simply.

‘Apocalypse Now is the greatest war film of all time and it is not particularly close,’ agreed GritCEO69.

The late Dennis Hopper appears as an unnamed photographer (Picture: Getty Images)

Fittingly enough for a film of its standing and repute, Apocalypse Now boasts a 90% positive score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Writing for the Chicago Sun Times, legendary film critic Roger Ebert called it ‘a grand and grave and insanely inspired gesture of filmmaking,’

Loud and Clear Reviews described it as an ‘enthralling, powerful miracle of a movie,’ while the Guardian summed it up as a ‘tour de force.’

Actor Robert Duvall delivers the film’s iconic ‘smell of napalm’ speech (Picture: Getty Images)

In addition to headlining stars Sheen and Brando, Apocalypse Now also features memorable performances from Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford and Robert Duvall.

The latter appears in what might be the film’s most iconic sequence, as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore.

And, as he kneels against the backdrop of a hellish, still-burning landscape, Kilgore casually drops one of the greatest lines of dialogue in film history.

‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ a shirtless Kilgore announces – a line written with remarkable casualness by screenwriter John Milius.

‘I just wrote it – it just came up… That’s what happens. People love to think that all this stuff happens when you write a famous line – that you really thought about it a lot,’ he told CNN.

Coppola has released three distinct cuts of the film over the years (Picture: Studio Canal) Comment now Where do you rank Apocalypse Now in the pantheon of war movies?Comment Now

The cut of the film currently streaming on Channel 4 is Coppola’s final version of the movie from 2019, which, in turn, followed 2001’s ‘Redux.’

By comparison, the Final Cut is shorter than Redux, but longer than the original 1979 version – restoring, among other things, Harrison Ford’s brief scene from the cutting room floor.

‘A cut of a film is a magical thing,’ Coppola told Vanity Fair in 2019. ‘After all, a movie is an illusion, and what makes the illusion come alive could be a matter of maybe taking out six frames from one sequence—that might do the trick.’

Likening the cut of a film to changing out an old cigarette lighter – ‘put in more fluid, pull the wick out,’ and so on – he views The Final Cut as his definitive version.

‘So my feeling was that to get Apocalypse Now to light up as an experience for the audience just required some tweaking,’ he added.

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After making the ‘greatest war film of all time’ and cinema’s greatest sequel in The Godfather Part II, Coppola suffered quite the reversal of fortune with his 2024 effort, Megalopolis.

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Dubbed ‘the worst film I’ve ever seen’ by Metro’s own Tori Brazier, Coppola’s sci-fi drama stirred up controversy thanks to its misleading trailer (which featured made-up critics’ quotes) and allegations that the director had tried to kiss multiple extras on the set of the film.

Coppola subsequently dismissed such claims as ‘completely untrue,’claiming that the allegations arose because he doesn’t ‘follow the rules’ of Hollywood.

‘It’s all so ridiculous. Look at the timing of that article. It’s right before we’re about to premiere the film at Cannes. They’re just trying to damage the picture,’ he said of the Guardian’s original report.

Apocalypse Now is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Channel 4.

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