APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX --------------------
In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" was the hit of the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palm D'Or. (It lost the Oscar, however, to "Kramer vs. Kramer" for that year.) In 2001, with 49 minutes of footage restored (including the much talked about French plantation sequence) and its time line slightly rejiggered, the newly reedited "Apocalypse Now Redux" was the hit of the Cannes Film Festival again.
Is the new version better? No, I don't think so. The French plantation sequence tries to give some historical perspective, but it's dialogue is clunky, particularly between Willard and Roxanne (Aurore Clement). Coppola had great instincts for what he wanted his score to sound like, but the newly done piece for these scenes sounds like sappy synth. It does feature a lovely piece where Clean (a fourteen year old Laurence Fishburne) is buried, that further fleshes out Chief's (Albert Hall) character, but Coppola and his editor Walter Murch's instincts were right on this bit the first time.
In fact, "Redux" has the overall result of making us know all of Chief's men - Sam Bottoms' surfer Lance, Fishburne's Clean and most of all, Frederic Forrest's Chef - much better, while making Willard more of a blank slate. Willard's at odds with himself in "Redux." He has no time to delay his mission when Chief wants to seach a boat or subsequently take a wounded civilian for medical care, yet he'd trade two precious barrels of fuel for a couple of hours with some Playboy bunnies? Speaking of the bunnies, their restored extra scene at a hellish medevac camp feels exactly like a DVD outtake thrown into the cut. The concept of men operating without a CO is explored far more convincingly at the last American outpost where Willard asks a crazed soldier who his commanding officer is and is asked in return 'Aren't you?'
Still, seeing "Apocalypse" in any form again on the big screen in a new Technicolor print is a treat, although the print I saw suffered from more blips and scratches than I would have expected. We can appreciate that Robert Duvall's cracked Colonel Kilgore is one of the great film characters ever to march across the big screen. Extra footage is mostly welcome with his character, although Kilgore's loudspeaker demands for the return of his surfboard, stolen by Willard's gang, carry the joke too far. Brando gets his Time magazine reading added, showing a more rational Kurtz than any original scene ever did.
Mostly what "Apocalypse Now Redux" points out is how much Coppola was indebted to his editor (Murch began with 1.25 million feet of film!) and brilliant cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. "Apocalypse Now" packs every bit as much punch now as it did in 1979 and we can thank "Redux" for reminding us.
"Apocalypse Now" - A "Apocalypse Now Redux" - B+
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