From his steely self-effacing consigliere in The Godfather to his surf-crazed Wagner fanatic in Apocalypse Now, simply to see him on screen made me smile
Robert Duvall was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American potency, and he placed energy and heart right into the motion pictures for more than 60 years. Simply to see him on display sufficed to make me grin. That good-looking face and head gave him the appearance of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas or a three-star basic playing the c and w circuit. Duvall was notoriously bald (the uncommon functions needing wigs always looked man-made on him) and so he looked the very same age almost all his acting life: forever in his energetic fortysomething prime– though often playing numbers complicated with tenderness and woundedness.Duvall had a long, rich job, starting with remarkable duties in To Kill a Mockingbird, M * A * S * H, The Conversation and Network, however it was fate to be mainly known for 2 very different and marvelous roles given to him by Francis Ford Coppola at either end of the 1970s. One was Tom Hagen, the quiet, self-effacing consigliere to the Corleone criminal offense family in The Godfather (1972 ), with a facility partnership both with the Don himself, played by Marlon Brando, and his youngest boy and successor, the coldly imperious Michael, played by Al Pacino. And the secondly was his remarkable turn as the surf-crazed Wagner fanatic Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979 ), that with his “Air Mobile” division of helicopters leads a massive attack on a Vietnamese town in broad daytime, with speakers shrieking The Ride of the Valkyries– in theory to airlift Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, and his boatful of males right into the river’s critical entry factor. However all also plainly, it’s because he simply desires a justification for a whooping and hollering cavalry strike.
Source: The Guardian