Apocalypse Now Redux

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

It's an occasion for welcoming a restoration that transforms a flawed movie, one that was touched by greatness, into a masterpiece.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Magnificent to look at, thrilling, ingenious, spellbinding and superbly done on every level, this is not just one of the best films of the year or the decade, but of all time.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Such gorgeous explosions, such a terrible vision, such an amazing work of art. Go. Now.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

One of the great films of all time. It shames modern Hollywood's timidity. To watch it is to feel yourself lifted up to the heights where the cinema can take you, but so rarely does.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As powerful as the movie remains and as much as I enjoyed this new cut, I have to say that the additional footage -- material that Coppola felt he had to excise 20 years ago to reach a commercial length -- has turned out to be something of a mixed blessing.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

A spruced-up version has been re-released after 22 years, and the addition of 43 minutes means the story really has room to breathe.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

No other movie released this year is as much of a filmgoing necessity as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

The breathtaking visual and aural restoration by Coppola and Murch makes the film's original glories even more intense than you remember them.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

No matter how many times you've seen it, you marvel at how terrifying, gorgeous and surreal the jungle, the yellow napalm and, finally, the disturbed face of Martin Sheen lying under a swirling fan appear on the large screen. This is indeed, a dream.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Episodic and uneven, but it has moments of great emotional power.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This is the untamed Apocalypse that Coppola envisioned in 1979 before money and mental pressures made him fear he had created something too long, too weird and too morally demanding for the masses.

USA Today Mike Clark

The film now seems both mellowed and --thanks in part to the most vibrant-looking prints in its 22-year history -- revitalized.

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

Coppola and Murch have balanced their new edit with grace notes of sweetness, elegance and eroticism, and the payoff is grand, providing both a reprieve from the multiple blitzkriegs and a break in the monotony of the cruise up the Nung.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

To look at Apocalypse Now is to realize that most of us are fast forgetting what a movie looks like -- a real movie, the last movie, an American masterpiece.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The best film of 2001 was made in 1979.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Remains a majestic explosion of pure cinema. It's a hallucinatory poem of fear, projecting, in its scale and spirit, a messianic vision of human warfare stretched to the flashpoint of technological and moral breakdown.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Whatever thematic clarity the added footage may confer is prosaic or didactic and intrusive; this stuff hit the cutting-room floor the first time around for good reason.

Time Richard Corliss

Redux is both a reminder of American cinema's last glory days and a rebuke to the timid present. Maybe Apocalypse Now wasn't the best movie of 1979, but Redux is surely the film to beat for 2001.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Better in certain ways than the original "Apocalypse Now," though the flaws are also magnified.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

In spite of its limited perspective on Vietnam, its churning, term-paperish exploration of Conrad and the near incoherence of its ending, (it) is a great movie. It grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only added to its sublimity.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A weightier, more nuanced and fulsome experience than the film the world has known up to now.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The clear powerhouse in the new film is a scene where Kurtz, speaking with the twisted coherence of the true paranoid-schizophrenic, uses Time magazine articles and other references to justify his actions.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie's jabbing originality is what sticks in your memory.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The more you see of Apocalypse, the more obvious its triumphs AND mistakes.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Nothing can redeem the movie's final 40 minutes. That may not be an ultimate horror, but it is a real one.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a mixed blessing, in some ways even richer and more atmospheric than the original version, in others attenuated and logy.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

The new material makes the film seem lumpy and overstuffed.

Salon.com Allen Barra

Though it may be a much clearer picture of the director's original intent, ultimately the new "Apocalypse Now" merely brings into focus the limits and faults of Coppola's -- and Milius' -- original concept.

Slate David Edelstein

Excruciatingly bad...Probably if Redux hadn't been acclaimed as a newly minted masterpiece, I wouldn't have felt so compelled to blow raspberries.