Apocalypse Now: Redux [DVD]

I started to write a review of the entire thing, but realized that the main issue here is the new material that has been added, so I will concentrate on that. Let me just say that I was blown away when I first saw this movie many years ago from the opening montage of Martin Sheen's character suffering a breakdown to "The End" by the Doors, punctuated by muted blasts of helicopter rotor blades. The only disapointment in the rest of the film for me was that I could predict which characters would die and which wouldn't; the black guys would die first and Willard and the surfer dude would survive because they were the hero and the harmless insane guy, respectively. As soon as Chef said 'I don't care where I die, as long as it ain't here", well, you knew he was toast.Most of the new scenes aren't really necessary and the first time you see them they do seem excessively over the top. But after a while it starts to blend in and flow. Kind of like adding a couple new movements to a familiar symphony. I believe that Coppola was trying to show war as being absurd to the point of parody...and beyond. A bad acid trip. A nightmare. And even nightmares have oddly funny moments. Part of the disconnect from reality that is the (cliche alert) insanity of war. Like the scene with the priest giving communion wearing a flak vest and Coppola's cameo appearance as a war documentary director, yelling "Don't look at the camera!". Perfect.The plantation scene was nice because it explained where Clean's body went, along with giving the historical context of the colonialist line of march in SE Asia. It didn't have to run so long though, and the scene where Willard gets some from the French MILF wasn't really needed. But its dreamlike quality blended in with the growing nightmare to come. This was the last pleasant interlude of the dream. The Bunny scene and the surfboard-stealing were comic relief, and both scenes were pretty much expendable.By far the best addition was Brando's deadpan-sounding reading of some CIA propaganda outta Newsweek magazine and the New York Times. Some things never change! While the little kids posing and taunting the emaciated Willard added a perfectly macabre touch. This is an important scene, one of the most important in the entire film and I don't know why it got cut from the original. This is the ultimate indictment from Kurtz of his accusers, and it is so subtly delievered that it doesn't fully hit you until much later. Of course, there are many scenes that stay with you long after you see them here and that is the mark of a classic. But this scene will haunt you not only because of what it means in the context of the storyline, but in the relevance that it still has now.All in all, this is a true masterpiece and a landmark achievement. Any other war movie comes in a distant second. And this just may be the final, if not best-loved, version of it.

"I watched a snail crawl across the edge of a straightrazor. Its my dream, its my nightmare. Crawling, slithering across the edge of straightrazor and surviving." That's the voice of a man called Kurtz, an enigmatic officer that's gone "native" in the depths of Combodia. Your mission objective is simple enough, go up the river, locate Kurtz, and terminate with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, many things are remiss in the oversimplified statement, "Go up the river and kill Kurtz." Just ask Captain Willard, who's been wanting to submerge himself within the depths of warfare once more and has now been given this onset of a message, intercepted from the prize, Wiliam Kurtz. His mission is simple enough, going up the river and finding his prey of a man, or at least that's how it seems. In the beating heart of the firestorm called Vietnam, nothing is easy, though, and Willard, submerged beneath the veins of madness and brutality as he seeks that elusive objective, begins to understand that more and more in the process.The strange thing about Apocalypse Now, set in the tinderbox of Vietnam, is that it isn't focused upon the sole event of the man forging through the jungle to go and capture the renegade named Kurtz. Instead, borrowing from its predecessor "The Heart of Darkness" - to which the film makes it clear that it pays a great deal of homage, it is about the madness of the events set into motion engulfing this one small figure and the futility of many of the actions/interactions located along the way. As Willard tells you in the beginning of the film, this is his confession on the matter, letting you know that he, too, is a guilty party in the chaotic affair that gnaws hungrily at the souls of all involved. Therefore, in a sense, he is also a party to the insanity taking root all over the feature. I found this to be an interesting affair, not only in the conceptual depiction of the insanity feeding upon the soldiers that we find ourselves focused upon, but in the questions the movie poses as it presses onward, showcasing more and more of the perversities by the same forces that label a man like Kurtz mad and yet birth asylums in their own ranks. The stellar casting accents this further, letting forces like a young Larry Fishburne and an equally young Harrison Ford play side by side with the Sheens and Brandos as they showcase a diversity of talents. All to destroy an enigmatically tormented soul.Even if you've seen the movie before, the DVD is a pristine example of restorative technology can do for movies that deserve preferential treatment. This example is one of the best I've seen, showing its viewers the wonders involved in the art of making a very dramatic example of what warring encompasses. It also has some interesting extras, including the comparisons to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," letting someone that hasn't been inducted into the work taste some of the symbology buried within those pages. For these reasons and because of other, more addictive loves that encompass the "smells of napalm in the morning," the abnormality of the color spectrum when one chemically bends it in the middle of a battle, and because of the sheer scope of the cinematic equation, I'd have to issue directives for everyone to buy.

Good movie