10 Director's Cuts That Seriously Improve Movies

Okay, so this entry is most definitely going to divide opinion. So let's get the obvious out of the way: YES, the pacing of Redux is drastically slowed by the inclusion of almost 50 minutes of extra footage.

To some the extra footage is almost as egregious as all the tampering George Lucas did to his original Star Wars trilogy. To others the extended scenes and the added sequences only add to the bizarre hallucinogenic experience of Francis Ford Coppola's greatest movie.

The original cut of Apocalypse Now IS perfect. There's no arguing with that. It's slick, stylised and refined. Even with its 2-hour-plus run time, at no point does it feel like its dragging, such is its ability to engage the viewer. Redux comes in at over 3-hours. And damn is it an ordeal at times.

But that's sort of the point of this movie. Captain Willard's journey up river was punctuated with bursts of horrific violence (the village massacre) and moments of depraved distraction (the second playboy bunny scene). But the arduous and crawling nature of his trip was equally as important to the story.

Too much time for introspective thought left Willard questioning the validity of his task, the moral implications of it, and his own sanity. All amounting to a deep sense of unease as he imagined the terrors of what he would find up river. With its extended sequences, Redux compounds these themes, masterfully.