apocalypse now recut

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2007)

The original version seems to be the best one.
The film cannot fit in 2 & half hours but in 3; it is a 3 hours long film; one hour on the battlefield, one hour on the river, one hour in the compound. It may be too long for most people but hey; the Vietnam war was a 15 years long ordeal,so there, & besides;anybody been stuck in traffic lately.....?
the film is flawless but it is when we arrive at the Kurtz compound that it gets hacked a bit in my opinion.
the additional scenes from the Redux are not needed & changes an epic maddening war film into a loose rock n roll war film. The french plantation scenes give justice to the french life styles for it is typically french to argue about politics at the diner table & run away screaming.... In the love scene between Willard & the french chick; she can t even pronounce the word: love. love as in: all you need is love or i want to love your leg. If any beautiful woman can t pronounce the word love adequately then she should not be in an American film...I know she is french,i m french too. Additional scenes have been released in the new DVD apocalypse now the complete dossier. These lost scenes are far more impressive than the ones of the Redux. There is the monkey sampan scene,very art gore, & very reminiscent of Aguirre the wrath of God with Philips saying to Willard: that s coming from where we re going captain.....& i say:
we are back in business boys! The booby trap scene.......:very nice! Additional scene with Dennis hopper: this is the war man; you kiss it right on the mouth if you can stand it.........:some well deserved comic relief diatribes from the man himself. Additional scene of the tiger cage with the first appearance of Kurtz giving orders in french & first dialogue between Kurtz & Willard: its right to win,its wrong to lose....:a much much better scene than the one in Redux where Kurtz reads life mag to Willard.
Additional scene with Colby who had so eloquently send a letter to his wife back in the state telling her to sell house,car & kids; in both original apocalypse now & Redux his character is a mute zombie but in the lost scene he kills Dennis Hopper & when he is asked by Willard what he feels when he sees all the killing around him, Colby answers: i feel,i feel the recoil of my shotgun.......:now that is keeping with what is expected God damned it! What has always been weak in apocalypse now is Kurtz rambling monologues & it is my belief that Brando did enough material for his millions but that the director maybe was too annoyed or to burned out to deal with it. In both apocalypse now & Redux, Kurtz talks about gardenias & reading from the hallow men which is lost on me, but other parts of his 45 minutes death monologue could of been used. Marlon Brando said: it was probably the closest i have ever come close
to getting lost in a part, and ones of the best scene i have ever played.... That footage has still yet to be released.
Maybe apocalypse now will never be a complete completed work & that s fine.
It makes it more interactive & the viewers can finish it from themselves.
If apocalypse now is about war & madness,
& apocalypse now Redux is too rock n roll for my own taste then the lost scenes at the compound makes it more like a chaotic existentialist western on its last leg which i like.
Its the end of the river all right, what did you expect?