1/25/2024 0 Comments Apocalypse nowCoppola's goal with Apocalypse Now is twofold: to display something of the absurdity or war and to provide evidence of what it turns human beings into. The essential story, which is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, is straightforward. Apocalypse Now Redux drags on for more than 3 1/3 hours the bloated size of the director's cut is matched only by the ego of the man who assembled it and the girth of the best-known actor. The original Apocalypse Now clocked in at about 2 1/2 hours - long, but not unreasonably so (although I would argue that the length of Brando's appearance should have been cut to resemble his extended cameo in Superman, which arrived in theaters a year earlier). There are a couple of new scenes that are important, but they are overwhelmed by two lengthy exhibitions of bad acting, bare breasts, and verbal diarrhea. Approximately 50 minutes of additional footage was inserted, 90% of which added little to or actually detracted from the plot. In 2001, director Francis Ford Coppola returned to the footage of Apocalypse Now and assembled a new cut, which he christened with the lugubrious title of Apocalypse Now Redux. Putting aside the simple fact that the ending is anticlimactic and disappointing, the picture's final half-hour is borderline-incoherent, badly written, and highlights a pair of poorly realized performances (Brando and Dennis Hopper). But Apocalypse Now falls apart with the arrival of Marlon Brando. There's little doubt that the bulk of the movie, which features actor Martin Sheen's trek from the normality of Saigon to the backwaters of Cambodia, is compelling material. Were it not for the final thirty minutes, I might agree. Since its 1979 release, Apocalypse Now has been widely regarded as one of the most powerful and influential films about the Vietnam War.
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