See the "Redux" version!

Rating: 10/10 (29 August 2001)

The re-cut version of this famous film ("Apocolypse Now: Redux", 2001) takes this classic to a new level. Ten years removed from the near-mythic stories about the film itself and the making of it, as well as from the actual events of Viet Nam (which it is not about, by the way), serves this film enormously. It allows the film itself more room to stand on its own somehow.

But more importantly, the added footage (which is quite significant, 49 min. I think) makes the film a much more profound and more eloquent piece of cinema. The emotional life is filled out, the journey itself is more understandable, and the theme of the film more powerfully explicit than in the original release (which followed the "action" more closely). See this film if for no other reason than to see how small the aspirations of current filmmakers seem to have become.