Director's cut or director's nightmare?

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2001)

Let me first state that I consider "Apocalypse Now" in my top 5 best films of all times and the botched, bloated Redux version will not change my opinion. When I first saw the film it was more than just a motion picture, it was a horrifying exploration into the Vietnam war and just like Coppola has stated that it "was not a film about the Vietnam war, but the Vietnam war", the picture gripped me more than any before or any after. It is truly a film masterpiece in every respect. Unfortunately the new Redux version is something else. First of all, it incorporates three sequences (the Playboy bunnies in a stranded helicopter, the French plantation and its strange ghost-like characters and the ridiculous scene of Kurtz reading paragraphs from Time magazine to a tied-up Willard), which should have remained in their natural habitat: the cutting-room floor. The rest of the film is a strange mixture of scenes successfully extended to give more insight into the characters, or the excellent dissolve montage at the beginning with the ceiling fan, the stealing of Colonel Kilgore's surfing board, the expansion of Kurtz's dialogue near the end where he comes in and out of shadows, but gone is the tight and to the point editing that turned this river journey from a terrifying and gripping nightmare into a milk run or travelogue more suited for the Discovery or History Channels. They should have followed Willard's advice after the tiger incident: "don't ever get off the boat again". One scene in special comes to mind: the one where they open fire on the innocent Vietnamese on the boat that they meet in the river. In the original version this scene came at a moment that the tension in the film was so high that the gunner's reaction was totally motivated and came about as a release to the nervous tension that had everyone in the boat on the edge of insanity. In the new version the killing becomes just a senseless massacre without any motivation at all. And there are many other instances just like it, but hard to pin down from seeing this version only once. Also, the absence of the original ending is a big disappointment. Anyhow, it is sad to see that even with 22 years of hindsight, Coppola still doesn't have the necessary objectivity to manipulate his material again. A prettier, larger package doesn't necessarily make a better film.