Review Detail

Cutting Heaven's Gate down to a normal feature length must have seemed a great idea, but Heaven's Gate was never intended to be a commercial western so it ends up defying any attempts to turn it into one.

This version of Heaven's Gate is easy to sit through owing to its brisk running time and the fact that most of the film's highlights remain. Unfortunately this version is missing all character development and all context leading up to the Johnson County land wars. It ends up feeling like the Classics Illustrated version of Heaven's Gate. If you aren't familiar with the long version this cut will likely be very hard to follow since there was never a strong narrative to edit a shorter version around--it feels like you are jumping into a movie already in progress, which of course you are.

I would say this is worth seeing once for what was attempted with the material but there will never be a perfect or easy to digest version of Heaven's Gate and the best is still Michael Cimino's director's cut which is tedious and beautiful and occasionally exciting. This version feels like the Hollywood-butchered-my-movie cut. Still, it's a nice try.