"That line, as memorable and shocking as it is, is only the set-up. As Coppola's camera slowly moves in on Kilgore's face, the soldier's eyes partly obscured by his oversized U.S. Cavalry hat, he reminisces fondly about the nightmarish death and destruction wrought by a previous napalm attack he had instigated. "The smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill. Smelled like... victory," he says, with terrible pride. Then, with something like grief: "Someday this war's gonna end.""
"He was one of the most gifted American actors ever to grace the screen, blessed with a rare ability to bring a stoic, tightly-wound man to vivid life. An undercurrent of raw vulnerability offset his own virile machismo. He won an Oscar for playing a country music star in 1983's Tender Mercies, and was nominated six more times, including for his brief appearance in Apocalypse Now and for arguably his best-known performance, as the trusted consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather."
Robert Duvall delivered an iconic, ten-minute performance as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, embodying a soldier who revels in devastation while hinting at private grief. He was widely regarded as one of the most gifted American actors, able to render stoic, tightly wound men with an undercurrent of vulnerability. He won an Academy Award for Tender Mercies (1983) and earned six additional nominations, including for Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. He was born January 5, 1931, in San Diego to a rear admiral father and a mother related to Robert E. Lee, and he later portrayed Lee in Gods and Generals.
Read at The Independent
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