When Orson Welles first hit Hollywood, his initial impulse was to turn Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness into a feature film. He couldn't secure financing for it and made Citizen Kane instead. 30 years later, Francis Ford Coppola tried his hand at Darkness, but, like Welles, had money troubles and ended up adapting The Godfather.  Citizen Kane and The Godfather are widely considered to be the two greatest films ever made, so following that logic, all young, aspiring filmmakers should take a crack at Conrad's novella.

Coppola, of course, eventually did make his own version of Darkness, but it wasn't until amassing a small fortune from the first two Godfather films and The Conversation.  The '70s were a pretty decent time for ol' Francis, bookending the decade with a screenwriting Oscar for Patton in 1970 and eight nominations for 1979's Apocalypse Now (it won for sound and cinematography but pretty much lost everything else to Kramer vs. Kramer).

22 years later, Now is back in theatres as Apocalypse Now Redux, into which editor Walter Murch (the restored Touch of Evil) has massaged about 50 minutes of new material (increasing the running time to well over three hours).  From the opening strains of The Doors' "The End," to the bright orange napalm explosions, to the ceiling fan that sounds like a helicopter in the Saigon hotel room of Captain Benjamin L. Willard, it takes about two minutes to confirm that the restored sound and picture (originally lensed by Goya in Bordeaux's Vittorio Storaro) were a worthwhile investment.

Willard (Martin Sheen, The West Wing), a recently divorced soldier on his second tour of Vietnam, is waiting for an assignment to take him back into The Shit.  But we quickly see Willard has some serious demons, plus a bit of a paranoid streak, when two MPs arrive to take him to see the General.  He thinks he's about to be charged with something, but instead, the General sends him on a unique mission.

It turns out that there is a rogue soldier named Kurtz (Marlon Brando, The Score) who has worked his way up a winding river into Cambodia and, somewhere along the way, lost his mind.  Willard's assignment is to take a PT boat up the river, find Kurtz and "terminate with extreme prejudice."  Willard has concerns.  After all, he's killed plenty of people, but never another American; never a fellow soldier.  A tall, thin Harrison Ford is in this scene, and this was way back when he used to try to act, so that's kind of fun, too.

Willard and his crew – the gruff boat pilot Chief (Albert Hall), professional surfer Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), New Orleans saucier Chef (Frederic Forrest), and 17-year-old Mr. Clean (played by then 14-year-old Laurence Fishburne) – set off on a crazy journey that involves, among other things, surfing, Wagner-blaring helicopters, Playboy Bunnies, waterskiing, and a hungry tiger.  Coppola nails the surrealism of the war, as well as showing our society's need to eliminate those who don't fit in.  Kurtz was an exemplary soldier with unusual but effective methods.  In other words, he didn't kill in the proper way, becoming dangerous to the greater War cause.

Willard's journey is more like The Odyssey than O Brother, Where Art Thou? was.  It's all there – the Bunnies are the sirens, and Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore may as well have been wearing an eye patch. The further upriver Willard goes, the crazier things become, leaving him to wonder what he'll find at the end.  Think about it – if Kilgore isn't considered insane, how far gone must Kurtz be?

There are four major additions to Now, some of which are shown (in part) in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a unsettling documentary filmed by Coppola's wife, Eleanor.  The first shows Willard bonding with his crew early in the film, just after the Kilgore incident.  There's a new scene where Willard trades fuel for two hours with the Bunnies, which are just one more thing for the American soldier to exploit in Coppola's Man vs. Nature tale.  The third is a lengthy diversion where Willard stumbles onto a French plantation that seems totally unaffected by the War, helping give Now the effect of going backwards in time as the boat goes upriver.  And there's some additional footage of Kurtz and Willard that, allegedly, helps to clarify the ending for those of you who didn't get it the first time around.

Are the additions necessary?  Probably not to us, but they were to Coppola, who originally scrambled to get Now ready for Cannes (it won the Golden Palm).  If anything, it's an excuse to see the film on the big screen, and that's good enough for me.

3:17 –

for disturbing violent images, language, sexual content and some drug use