APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX

SYNOPSIS:
Vietnam, the 70s. U.S. Army intelligence officer Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent to Cambodia to eliminate the deranged US Colonel Walter E Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz is conducting unauthorised and bloody operations from a remote jungle compound guarded by local tribesmen and fellow U.S. soldiers who have also deserted. Taken up river in a patrol boat staffed by Chief (Albert Tucker), Chef (Frederic Forrest), Clean (Larry Fishburne) and Lance (Sam Bottoms), Willard encounters gung-ho Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) and his helicopter division, a group of Playboy bunnies hired to entertain troops and a French family that has refused to leave its plantation. Finally the river leads to confrontation with the enigmatic Kurtz.

Apocalypse Now Redux (not to be confused with redox [reduction]) is redolent of parable or legend, depending on your point of view. It's 49 minutes longer than the original commercial cut, but I can't be sure whether it's also 'more'. I think it is. It certainly feels satisfyingly complete. Long films are sometimes criticised for being long, and sometimes justly: but when the filmmaker has something say (eg Coppola's Godfather trilogy) length is no longer a valid currency. Some books are long, too….Although film cannot approximate the complexity of a novel, Coppola's film approaches it with a depth of understanding that powers this giant of a film towards its inevitable, exhausting conclusion. Made in 1979, when the Vietnam war was still an open wound, on the surface the film is a Vietnam war story. The parable is much more obvious now – perhaps especially in this expanded cut: we cannot tolerate individuals who defy the system, no matter which human grouping comes under the 'we' and which individual strays. But even if you were to ignore that aspect, the film is a riveting achievement as a war movie with intense focus and spectacular veracity (overworked fog machines excluded). There are also moments that give moral pause, such as the meal scene at a French plantation deep in the jungle, where the French lecture the Americans about Vietnam. The book probably does it better – especially the seduction that follows – but it's still an effective moment or three. A new generation of audiences are here given a chance to see one of the watershed films of modern cinema on the big screen. They'll learn to "love the smell of napalm in the morning" and discover "the horror…the horror…" while marveling at a major work of lasting value.
Andrew L. Urban