Apocalypse Now (1979)

"I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen.
​But you have no right to call me a murderer."
When I heard that a remastered 'final cut' of this masterpiece was releasing I was very eager to experience it again. Since I've not officially reviewed the original I figured this would be a great place to start. 'Apocalypse Now' is cinematic brilliance. I believe it has been since the theatrical release and it's continued to get better creating relevancy even today. This movie has one thing to say - war is hell. Past this simple, yet fleshed out and visceral experience, there is plenty of space for analytical discovery. Coppola's vision here contains; ultra-violence, napalm, playboy, acid. The audience is given time to digest each episode and feel the mood that he spent 30 million trying to make. There is no conventional plot and it's structure based on the bones of 'Heart of Darkness.' This gigantic film and great effort continues to live on because Coppola achieved, and Roger Ebert says it best, "Those moments as common in life as art, when the whole huge grand mystery of the world, so terrible, so beautiful, seems to hang in the balance." The 'final cut' features impressive remastering both visually and audibly but the true importance are the cuts made from the redux, which was a whopping 3 hours and 30 minutes. The final cut was said by Coppola to maintain the weirdness that was cut from the theatrical version without being as uneven as the redux. I agree.

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