But the most depressing review I've read is by far the most in-depth. Glenn Erickson, aka the DVD Savant, is one of the few reviewers who had ever seen the 'rough-cut' version and has written about it previously on his site. He's quite the AN scholar (and fan), and his thoughts certainly carry more weight with me than any of those mentioned earlier. He writes:
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"No new review today (shame), but a report on last night's screening of APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX.
"I'm afraid that this is indeed another case of the deplorable trend to go back and create new marketable items out of established hits, by adding scenes and details that the filmmakers never intended to be included. Francis Coppola has joined his pals Lucas and Spielberg by pulling his pretty-darn-amazing Vietnam War movie out and retooling it. According to all the hype, this is the 'expanded version' that fully expresses the filmmaker's intentions, etc. A few days ago the LA TIMES had a big John Milius article on the subject, falling all over itself in hommage to these great artists.
"That this is just so much hooey isn't making too much news. The added 'redux' word hangs over the new APOCALYPSE poster like the 'now with Bleach' sticker on a box of detergent. Coppola could have edited together a bunch of trims and outs in 1979 and UA would have released it - he had total control and spent years figuring out the best final form for the movie. This recut is just commercial opportunism ... did somebody in Zooetrope-Land see the need for some extra cash ...?
"The added scenes are very damaging to the film. For curiosity value, plenty of us will want to see this - several nice things from the famous work-in-progress rough cut (link) are there, such as the stealing of Robert Duvall's surfboard. But all are unnecessary. The original cut, which savagely ejected major scenes left and right, has been a model of editorial genius for 22 years. Coppola and his editors truly fashioned a diamond out of a lot of discordant material, and gave it a consistent through-line.
All of the new material either breaks this through-line, or slows what used to be a deliberate picture into a static one.
"The surfboard theft business is cute, but breaks Coppola's sombre tone. A few more details of the Duvall character show him being 'compassionate', which works against his character. There is not a single frame more of the mysterious Scott Glenn character or his fight with Willard. No massive chanting rituals. The added scene with Marlon Brando does exactly nothing but dissipate Kurtz's mystery.
"The two major breaks, the visit with the Playboy Bunnies and the French Plantation, are simply all wrong. Coppola himself has been vocal, on several occasions, about the wisdom of not using them. The Bunnies had made their impact already in the concert scene, and the footage with the sailors hopping in the sack with them always had the 'whatever' look of stuff improvised to keep the actors happy while sets were being repaired from a hurricane.
"The French Plantation scene really kicks the movie into a bucket, introducing a new tone and a 'romantic' subplot that goes nowhere. I got ZERO feel for any idea of the movie tracing a reverse evolution of Vietnam history, as claimed by Coppola. Worse, the scene is wall-to-wall exposition with Frenchmen at a table haranguing Willard about Viet history ... just the kind of specific, literal chatter that the original movie avoided, choosing instead to remain a kind of violent and dreamlike poem about Vietnam. It also reminds me too much of John Milius' screaming right-wing harangues in real life, when he was upset that Carter had decided to give Panama back the canal.
"The funeral scene at the French plantation was very nice, especially for the Albert Hall character, but its feeling of military reverence also goes against the grain of what was once subversive and surreal.
"The presentation of the new film is nothing to write home about. APOCALYPSE NOW used to be revived at the Cinerama Dome every few years or so, whenever a hole popped up in the booking schedule, and they always trotted out some terrific (70mm?) one-of-a-kind print . The new 35 I saw last night was very uneven, with rich blacks but a yellow haze on lots of scenes. These weren't Vittorio Storaro color effects, either, just printing troubles from mass-producing prints from such an old source. I saw the picture in a screening at one of the best theaters in town, but the sound was not good either. Walter Murch has decided to bury the dialog lines even deeper under his audio montages. The Wagner music in the heli attack sequence now jumps around the screen directionally depending on what the camera angle is. In the new scenes, I only got about half of the dialog that was spoken. It's simply unintelligible. I often couldn't tell if Christian Marquand was speaking French or English.
"So that's the skinny. Had I not seen APOCALYPSE NOW 30+ times, I'm sure I'd have a different opinion. These scenes would have made an excellent addendum to a special DVD or something. It's a shame that the promoter Coppola was able to overcome the artist Coppola. All the artistry of APOCALYPSE NOW, one of the monuments of the '70s, now seems like more grist for a moneymaker's mill.
"I don't recommend the movie."
-Glenn
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/spec.html
