According to my dictionary, "Redux" is defined as a revival or having returned from battle or exile. Director Francis Ford Coppola has taken that meaning to a whole new level. Coppola has inserted a few scenes, including a long segment where U.S. soldiers stop at a French plantation. The sound, remarkable in its day, has even more impact in Walter Murch's restoration. The new soundtrack is full of squealing synthesizers and percussive effects by ex-Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. With a remastered soundtrack, original material and reintegrated scenes excised from the original 1979 masterpiece, this new version helps give the characters greater detail in subtle ways. .
The lyrical, slow moving opening sequence is a dazzling combination of cinematography, music, and hallucinatory images from the brutal and destructive war in Vietnam. The sounds of helicopters or war choppers is heard as the mind altering words or The Doors" song The End is perfectly fitted to the beginning of this film.
The song The End is used throughout the film. In the hotel room in Saigon when Willard goes into a spastic, half-nude karate dance and self-destructively punches and breaks the mirror, you can hear the lyrics "take a chance with us" pumping in sequence to Willard's actions. Its use is almost two fold. Obviously, it is the beginning of the movie with the words "This is the end" is one aspect, the other can argue that it is the end of Captain Willard. .
The end of the film ends almost as it begins. The Doors" song The End is played, but not at the slow beginning of the song, but at the climax. It is pumped loudly at the fastest point of the song matching the lightning strobe effects of the controlled ritualistic sacrifice of a water buffalo/caribou by the natives and is masterfully cross-cut against the stalking and slaying of Colonel Kurtz. It is a dramatic abrupt ending to one hell of a twisted war.
