Apocalypse Now Redux

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Digitally remastered with 49 minutes of previously unseen footage, Apocalypse Now Redux is the reference standard of Francis Coppola's 1979 epic. A metaphorical hallucination of the Vietnam War, the film was reconstructed by Coppola and editor Walter Murch to enrich themes and clarify the ending. On that basis Redux is a qualified success, more coherent than the original while inviting the same accusations of directorial excess. The restored "French plantation" sequence adds ghostly resonance to the war's absurdity, and Willard's theft of Colonel Kurtz's beloved surfboard adds welcomed humor to the film's nightmarish upriver journey. An encounter with Playboy Playmates seems superfluous compared to the enhanced interplay between Willard and his ill-fated boat crew, but compensation arrives in the hellish Kurtz compound, where Willard's mission--and the performances of Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando--reach even greater heights of insanity, thus validating Redux as the rightful heir to Coppola's triumphantly rampant ambition. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Viet Nam was never like this.......2007-09-11

I know that critics liked this movie about Viet Nam, but I have to disagree. This movie is nothing, I repeat nothing, like Viet Nam. I would not recommend this movie to anyone. If they wanted to know what Viet Nam was like, I would recommend Oliver Stone's 'Platoon,' because that was as close to my experience of Viet Nam that I have seen. Stay away from 'Apocalypse Now,' it is so unrealistic it borders on fantasy, and is very disrespectful to the American soldier. If I could rate this lower, I would rate this "ZERO."

clueless..........2007-05-22

this film never made any sense to me--simply because this director never lived through any of it and does not get the subject. critics who praise this mess are just as misguided as the guy who made this joke of a war flick.
the reason Platoon works for me is because Stone knew what he was talking about; he lived it, spent time in the jungle, was shot at, etc.
what's the use?
get it if you like being conned.

the most hated line in the history of the cinema (for me) is "I LOVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING."
I wished someone could have taped the actor's mouth shut for saying something so insidious.

Wagner, Elliot and Conrad.......2007-01-22

Apocalypse Now is number 28 among the best American movies ever, and this Redux version is among the 1000 Best Movies on DVD by Peter Travers. The Redux version adds 49 minutes to the original movie, among them, the dinner scene with the French. The only "extra" in this Redux DVD is a theatrical trailer, which is very poor.
This movie is Coppola's version of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The movie also leads us to "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot, a great poem Wurtzs (Brando) is reading at the end of the movie. In the middle of the movie, in one of the best scenes in movie history -the helicopters' attack on a village-, we can listen to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". A lot of references between the movie, literature, and music (good Rock tracks by The Doors, etc.) that make this movie a great asset of the American culture.
I first watched this movie in the 80's when it was broadcasted on TV. While watching it yesterday, I could remember parts of it. It is really difficult to me to rate this movie fairly. I am torn between a good or excellent rating and a modest one. Is it a masterpice? Is this redux version better than the original one? Today, I am giving this movie 4 stars, or 7 over 10. I found this redux version to be too long. Besides the "egg" scene, and the sex afterwards, the scene dinner with the French is pointless and too long. One of the best assets of this movie is Martin Sheen, who is absolutely great and carries his character in a mesmerizing way. I know nobody is going to like this, but I don't like Marlon Brando. The narrator is, at some points, tiring (is it the same narrator of the video game Max Payne?), and one of the final scenes where they sacrifice a water buffalo is some place between nasty, and ubearable. A disturbing and tough one!
I recommend this movie to the adult public (it is rated R for disturbing images, language, sexual content and some drug use). I honestly think I need to watch this movie several more times, to completely understand it. But as for today, I can't give it more than 4 stars.
P.S. If you like my review vote YES. You can read all my other reviews if you wish to. I modestly write them to help people form an opinion about movies, music and books, but if nobody reads them (if you don't vote I do not know if you did) there is no point in writing them

GREAT MOVIE TO AD TO YOURE COLLECTION.......2007-01-10

This is an extended verssion of the original Apocalypse now version that was edited.This is great to see the rest of the movie.By it you will love it.

War is never human, always barbaruc........2006-10-03

A long awaited version of this cult film. Even Francis Ford Coppola has been submitted to cuts in one of his most important films. They say it was commercial. They know it was not... entirely. One main scene was cut off : the French plantation scene that reveals how the Americans had played a double game during the war in Indochina between the Viet Minh and the French : they had helped the Viet Minh and hence had produced the French defeat. Poor loser's explanation, for sure, and yet not entirely false. Think of the Americans helping Saddam Hussein against Iran, or the Djihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets. We know the results. Double agents are always those who lose in the end. But this full and final cut of the film, though it does not change the meaning of the film, does change the depth of this meaning. We get down into horror little by little as we go up the river. Of the five men on the boat the first to die is the black soldier, and then the second to die is the black sergent. The blacks have been eliminated first : quite a symbolical truth. The third victim will be the white soldier from New Orleans who speaks French. It is also very symbolical today, though maybe less in those days, though it was symbolical of what happened to the French in Indochina : they were defeated. The only two survivors are the two white pure Americans. But what is shown under a new depth is the meaning of this horror. We could have thought Kurtz used the basic and daily horror of those historically-retarded jungle people to impose savagery and total carnal violence. But what appears now is that it is not the savagery of these people that produced their war but it is the war imposed from outside that produced the savagery, or liberated this savagery from its box. In other words a war that comes from outside, and I have the propension to think all wars always come from outside, even the most patriotic and justified defensive war, such a war liberates the deepest layers of the survival instinct in man, not even the animal instinct of survival. These men who commit gratuitously-embellished violence do not plainly aim at surviving which would simply imply killing their adversaries, enemies or challengers.They survive in a completely different way : they have the feeling to be alive because they make the other die in atrocious suffering and in the most barbaric way. It is not so much the dying of the enemy that gives them this feeling of being alive, but the torture, the suffering, the horror in which this death is performed. In other words it is no longer only the survival instinct that is at stake but it is also the pleasure instinct. In other words they transform the cold necessary killing of an enemy into a hot pleasurable sexual event that replaces real sexuality. Killing in such a horrible way becomes a pleasurable intercourse and the victim is seen as fulfilling its destiny, just like the buffalo that is killed at the end of the film. A man who enters such a war is supposed to accept his dying in such a sacrificial way because that is his ultimate function. But then where is the war ? We have regressed to the emergence of humanity from animality, of man from the animal he was before : this dire moment when human beings felt that killing animals had a religious dimension, when human beings felt that killing their enemies had a religious dimension, that is to say in both cases a pleasurable power dimension. That led humanity to inventing religions, religions that originally always justified the killing of enemies and that provided the believers with the conviction that they had special powers enabling them with unfailing and totally justified capabilities, powers. But what will remain after this thrilling sensation of absolute power provided to soldiers by those sophisticated new technologies that kill with a micronic precision ? The horror, nothing but the horror, the haunting and gnawing question : Why did I do this ? Why did I feel pleasure when doing it ? Why does it feel so easy to go beyond limits that should never be trespassed, such as into torturing activities ? And for us the film brings up one question : Is there a Kurtz in each one of us ? Is there an Eichman in each one of us ? Is there an Auschwitz in each one of our memories ? Coppola seems to tell us that war is a Pandora's Box that we better not open. Coppola is in phase with Clive Barker who tells you war, and maybe life, is a secret cube that you must not open because beyond it there is nothing but suffering and the pleasure of inflicting as well as receiving that suffering. The old film was a masterpiece, this new director's cut, or redux is a biblical masterpiece : think of Abraham who is going to sacrifice his own son with the full assent of everyone around him, or at least no protest from them, including the son himself, and God replacing the son with a ram at the very last minute to symbolise that humanity has to move away from any type of human sacrifice, even in war. Human life is sacred and no human being has the right to take one single human life away. That's where Kurtz is wrong : everyone has the right to judge him, to call him a murderer, but no one has the right to perform justice and to kill him to do so, except in a completely perverted version of rightfulness.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

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Apocalypse Now Redux

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Widescreen version
Dolby digital
English subtitles
interactive menus
scene selection

ASIN: B000RRDC4C

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