I'm honestly not clear whether this film is being pretentious or plain incompetent, realistic or gratuitously nasty, arty or just badly-exposed and obscured by dust or smoke. What I can say is that I can't imagine how on earth United Artists could ever have imagined they had a viable commercial project on their hands in this unlovely, feel-bad, incomprehensible Western -- what mass-market audience did they ever imagine would flock to see a five-hour epic more akin to "Andrei Rublev" than to "Stagecoach"?

"Andrei Rublev", for Western audiences, at least had the benefit of subtitles. For many sequences "Heaven's Gate" is badly in need of them -- and I understand Russian and German, so I had a flying advantage over the intended audience! But it is the English dialogue that is in many places so 'naturalistic' as to be entirely incomprehensible. Add that to a script that simply doesn't explain important facts for much of the film, and a vast cast of barely-differentiated stereotypes, and you end up with viewers struggling simply to understand what was going on; I had to log on to the IMDb and read through a number of threads on the film's discussion board before I even grasped who the characters in the first and last scenes were meant to *be*, let alone what was the point of the scenes in question. (The latter question, I confess, still escapes me.) It wasn't until Averill got sacked that I even realised what his job was!

My best guess as to what this film was actually trying to achieve is that it was a last-ditch attempt to fight back against television by doing all the things contemporary American TV couldn't provide: widescreen presentation (which is well used here, without the all too common problems when composing close-up shots for a letter-box-shaped screen),gratuitous nudity and swearing (it gets thrown in every so often as if the director is trying to prove he can),and graphic shots of mangled corpses, intestines, splattered brains etc. And, of course, long stretches of running time with which to conjure magic in the absence of commercial breaks.

But there is no way that it can justify its uncut length. It's plain from the first moment just where all those hours went -- not into complex plot or characterisation, but the very simple device of holding each and every shot that little bit longer than necessary. Every establishing shot of background activity could have been trimmed by at least half; all the endless pauses during the dialogue could have gone, to the improvement both of the general pacing and of the running-time. But even cutting the film back to the bone -- the reputed 90-minute version might have been interesting -- cannot cover for its other problems: the mumbled and obscured dialogue, the deliberate and bewildering choice to film long stretches through dust or smoke, and above all the lack of basic exposition that left me struggling through the entire movie with questions such as 'who was that? why did that just happen? what did that mean?'

The film is ugly -- deliberately so, I'm pretty sure -- and downbeat, again deliberately so. The only thing I can say in its favour is that despite the extreme running length, which kept me in the cinema from half-past six to eleven o'clock at night, and cost me eight pounds sterling into the bargain for this privilege, it kept me concentrating so hard on trying to understand what was going on that I was never even close to falling asleep; although all that effort did catch up with me during the intermission in the shape of a massive bout of yawning!

It's not, I think, the worst film I've ever seen. It does have moments of interest and occasional beauty; it suffers principally by its gross and over-indulgent scale. But a film this size would have to be really, really good to justify the effort, and "Heaven's Gate" isn't even good enough to count as mediocre. By the end I was dying for a wise-cracking little comedy, a nice taut thriller or a lively silent melodrama -- anything to take the turgid taste of this bloated, putrid 1970s-era whale out of my mouth.

Even a bad film would do. I'd rather watch "Satan met a Lady" -- infinitely rather -- than bother with "Heaven's Gate" again. I'd sooner see "Lawnmower Man"; at least it would be over more quickly. I'd prefer (heaven help me) to sit through "What! No Beer?"...

One doesn't have to be prejudiced against a film to dislike it. The programme advertising the showing was full of praise for its "brave, clear-sighted view of class struggle", its "epic sweep" unjustly cut from its "original grandeur" by the distributors. I saw it for the first time under the most favourable of conditions, on a giant screen with a sympathetic audience, many of whom had seen it before or were curious as to the uncut version (and who could be found during the intermission explaining the plot so far to their bemused companions); and after having seen the original product in all its unmolested glory, I'd say that the critics got it right first time round.

Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" is certainly not without its problems, but it's hard to believe, now that the historical context in which the film was released is long past, that it received such a rough drubbing when it came out 25 years ago. It's quite an interesting film and even a very well made one. It bears many similarities to Cimino's earlier success, "The Deer Hunter": a focus on male solidarity and conflict, man returning to a more primitive state, a narrative structure that has the protagonist moving from civilization to a barbaric world and then back to a civilization that will be changed forever by preceding events. Like "The Deer Hunter," this films deals in images more than words. Unlike "The Deer Hunter," however, and this film's biggest failing, is the lack of a cast of the same strength that graced Cimino's earlier film. "The Deer Hunter" had Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken. "Heaven's Gate" gets Christopher Walken, but in a role for which he is ill suited, and instead of De Niro and Streep we get Kris Kristofferson and Isabelle Huppert. I don't know what possessed Cimino to think Kristofferson could carry a film of this magnitude, but it's a dire miscalculation on his part. Kristofferson isn't necessarily a horrible actor, but he's certainly not strong enough to retain an audience's interest over the course of a 219 minute film. Isabelle Huppert is bland as well. The result is long scenes with little or no dialogue, in which feelings are supposedly being expressed in the faces of the actors; but since the actors aren't very strong, nothing is getting expressed. That's what makes "Heaven's Gate" much longer than it needs to be. There's really only a wisp of a story, so if we're not fully engaged in the characters, what exactly are we supposed to be engaged in? However, the weak cast and writing aside, "Heaven's Gate" is still a remarkable achievement in its own way, and a much better film than a new generation of movie lovers has been led to believe. Cimino may stumble with actors, but he's got a iron-clad grasp of visuals, and puts some stunning and memorable images on the screen. The film feels much more like a 70's film than it does an 80's film. At various times, it reminded me of "Little Big Man," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," and "The Wild Bunch." If that esteemed company doesn't serve as an endorsement of this film, I don't know what does.

Grade: B

What ? You expect me to review HEAVEN'S GATE a movie that destroyed the Hollywood studio system and bankrupted United Artists ! Okay then , but mind if I ask where do I begin ?

I've seen this movie twice . The original cut in 1986 and the short version ( Amazing to think a movie that has a 149 minute run time qualifies as a short version ) last night and I must say that it's a much better movie than Michael Cimino's Oscar winning THE DEER HUNTER if only because it has a much clearer plot : An association of cattle barons hire a mercenary army to kick immigrants out of Wyoming . There that's the plot perfectly explained and I doubt if anyone can clearly explain the plot of THE DEER HUNTER in one sentence . By a bitter irony Cimino then decides to muddy the waters by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the movie and the film starts with a character set up in Harvard where friends James Averill and Billy Irvine have the party of their life . These scenes are very cinematic and epic as boys and girls waltz on the lawn but as for introducing the characters they become totally redundant later in the film . It's interesting to note that in the shortened version much of this has been edited out and replaced with a voice over where Averill travels to Wyoming on a train . This could easily have been the opening scene without any detriment to the narrative

HEAVEN'S GATE has four credited editors a ridiculous amount for a movie and while watching the short version you can't help noticing how badly edited it all is . For example we see Averill and Irvine talking in a billiard room . Averill walks away into another room and confronts the association heads and receives applause from Irvine who is now sitting in a chair in the same room which gives the impression that he can teleport ! Even if you have no knowledge about film editing you can't fail to notice that many , many scenes start or finish in a completely unnatural manner but one can't help thinking it's not the fault of the editors since so many scenes should have been discarded from the script at first draft stage which would have led to a better and much more compact screenplay without it losing any epic quality . Having said that it wouldn't have stopped the sound editing being so awful and many sequences are ruined because the background noise drowns out the duologue

Where the film works best is when it concentrates on the hatred the association has for the immigrants and when it does it is a great film at portraying man's callous inhumanity to man . It also contains some very shocking violence and epic battle scenes and it's a pity that HEAVEN'S GATE is known only for the behind the scenes fiasco than what takes place on screen . So if you watch this movie please forgot that it caused studio bosses to be the driving force on a movie instead of the director or that its production costs ballooned from two million dollars to forty million . Enjoy it for what it is - A flawed epic