APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX
Released: August 3, 2001
Originally released in 1979 after years of production hell that almost bankrupted director Francis Ford Coppola, this sprawling classic war epic receives a new lease on life. It also gives it a shot at showing today's kids that "Pearl Harbor" is simply a fluff action movie when compared to the harsh brutality of "Apocalypse Now". What "Pearl Harbor" and even "Saving Private Ryan" barely hint at is given a showcase here. Martin Sheen plays Captain Willard, sent home then back to Vietnam on a classified mission to "terminate with extreme prejudice" the AWOL and suspected loon Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The movie is not simply a Michael Bay "Sheen goes and kills the bad Brando" guns 'n explosions type of movie at all. Rather, it forces Sheen (and the audience) to consider his mission from a variety of viewpoints. Sheen must follow orders but by doing so is he going against what should be a unbreakable moral code. Sheen battles his own mind, rather than directly with the Vietnamese. Kurtz is a renegade, following orders but doing so with such precision it begins to unsettle the brass back in Washington. For his efforts he is then targetted for termination in a "classified" manner that is anything but. Considering no one is supposed to know Sheen's mission it still doesn't come as a surprise to him that Brando's Kurtz is in fact waiting for him, very aware of what must transpire. This new version, with 49 extra minutes of footage added, is probably more disturbing than the original cut. The horrors, as Kurtz laments, are not simply death and destruction but lies and betrayal. The whole film was reconstructed from the raw dailies and then edited together with lots of never before scene footage. Two new extended scenes make up the bulk of the new material. One long piece involves the French plantation sequence which does explore interesting areas but does tend to slow the already slow pacing down. The other added long piece involves meeting up with the Playboy Playmates up the river after their helecopter ran out of fuel. This scene offers a disturbing and gruesome truth yet reveals that despite it all the characters try to do whatever they can to keep themselves from going insane, past the point of no return, which is evidently where Kurtz long since crossed over. Great support (fleshed out in this "Redux" version) from Robert Duvall, a young Harrison Ford, Lawrence Fishburne, Frederic Forrest and Dennis Hopper along with Sheen's powerful performance and Brando's presence make this not only still a great film but a reminder to today's crop of director's that making generic movies is no way to leave your mark.
213 Minutes
Miramax/Buena Vista
Originally released by Paramount