This movie is too long!

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2008)

I have heard about this movie for a long time, but I never got a chance to watch it even though I am already familiar with the theme music. I was finally able to check out the DVD from a local library. I was surprised that it is 3 hours and 3 minutes. I thought that it was the extended version, it seems that the original movie is really that long!
It certainly is too long, especially the first half of the film. It has many unnecessary details. If it didn't win the best picture of 1978, I would have stopped watching it entirely. It has a lot of unnecessary scenes. For example, it has several long minutes of people dancing at a wedding party at the beginning. Sure, if the director want to show people how happy they were before going to the war, after all, this is not a musical film.
The color of this film is mostly dark, it is lack of bright light. That made this film less appealing. The performance was solid though. The closed caption sometimes referred to those vietnamese people talking as "speaking Chinese", that is not correct.