Not a movie
I had a hard time making it through the last half of this DVD at 128X. In the "film as art" world, there is subtle and there is non-existent. Heaven's Gate, as anything beyond a monument to it's own excesses, is 4+ hours of none existence.

Even given all of this film's glaring missteps, Cimino might have blundered his way through like he did with The Deer Hunter, but for one fatal stroke - Kris fricking Kristopherson. What the hell was Cimino thinking? Were Buck Owens and Roy Clark busy that week? Who the hell ever told Kris Kristopherson that he could act? Repeatedly, in the midst of it's soft focus cinematic splendor, we are made to watch Kris Kristopherson mugging at the camera like a minor league ballplayer doing a commercial for a discount carpet outlet. I'm sorry, but there's just some sh_t I will not eat...

It Isn't Worth Your Time to Gawk at This Particular Train Wreck.
"Heaven's Gate" is remembered today as "the film that sank United Artists" and one of Hollywood's all-time biggest box office disasters. Written and directed by Michael Cimino shortly after his success with "The Deer Hunter", its budget escalated from $7.8 million to over $40 million when UA, in a shockingly shortsighted contract, allowed Cimino unlimited cost overruns. Cimino shot an outrageous 1.3 million feet of film and edited the film to 5 hours and 25 minutes, then to the 3 hour 39 minute version on this DVD for the premiere in November 1980. It was almost universally panned by critics. A 2 1/2 hour cut was widely released to theaters and all but ignored by filmgoers. Michael Cimino's career was essentially over, as was United Artists shortly thereafter.

I was prepared to like this film. American critics in 1980 thought that it had no redeeming value. French critics years later praised it to the heavens. I thought the truth might be somewhere in between: a mediocre film that suffers from excessive length. The Americans may have punished the film for Cimino's behavior. The French make a point of loving everything Americans hate. Perhaps the shorter cut that flopped at the box office was too short for the style in which it was filmed. No such luck. When I finally saw "Heaven's Gate", it was worse than I expected. In addition to the litany of problems with the film itself, this is a terrible script. If it had not undone United Artists and served as a symbol of artistic self-indulgence, "Heaven's Gate" would not be remembered at all.

In Johnson County, Wyoming 1892, an organization of wealthy ranchers, the Stock Growers Association, is frustrated with the tide of homesteading immigrants who are poaching their cattle. Under the leadership of the well-connected Frank Canton (Sam Waterson), the Association draws up a death list of 125 homesteaders and hires 50 mercenaries to execute them. Sheriff Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson) is sympathetic to the plight of the immigrants and tries to ensure the legality of the Association's actions. The Association's foreman Nate Champion (Christopher Walken), a rival of Averill's for the affections of one Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert), is becoming wary of his employer's violent means. Angry ranchers, desperate immigrants, and all hell is going to break loose.

As to the veracity of the events depicted in "Heaven's Gate", the Johnson County War really did happen, sort of. The battle between immigrants and mercenaries employed by the Stock Growers Association was averted before it could take place. Many of the characters in the film take their names from real people: Ella Watson, Jim Averill, Frank Canton, Nate Champion, W.C. Irvine. But the roles they play in the film are entirely different from those in reality. Watson and Averill were dead by 1892. So the film is fictional except for the general circumstances of the conflict in Johnson County.

"Heaven's Gate" consists of scenes that run too long and scenes whose purpose is mysterious. There is just a lot of footage that doesn't accomplish much. The dialogue is corny and cliched. One major fault is that the film fails to make the immigrants sympathetic. They are an unruly cabal of hot-headed peasants whom we never know and certainly never like. Another failure is that Jim Averill is entirely opaque. We don't have any idea why he is in Wyoming or why he does anything. I can't imagine why Canton is hauling Billy Irvine, a drunken thorn in his side, around with him either. Actually, I don't know why Irvine is in the movie. This film is just like that. It doesn't make sense.

When people can't find anything else good to say about "Heaven's Gate", they praise Zigmos Dsigmond's cinematography. He is one of the great talents of his era. This film is in color but almost sepia-toned, so brown is the predominant color. In the print that I saw, the brown had an unwelcome pink undertone. I don't know if it's a problem with the transfer or if the film really looked like that. There is much artistic rendering of dust or, less commonly, smoke. For 3 hours, I wondered how Zigmos Dsigmond kept the dust out of his camera. There is no denying that Dsigmond's photography looks good if I ignore the pink. (The pink was bad judgment if it was intentional.) But this isn't his best work, and it is very self-conscious at times.

Whatever its faults -and they are many- "Heaven's Gate" ultimately fails because no one or thing in the film is compelling. It has compelling moments, but they are fleeting. Each time I saw one, I hoped the film would take off from there. It never happened. This is basically 3 3/4 hours of texture. A script with bad dialogue, nebulous characters, and actions without motivation should never have been green-lighted. In his book "Final Cut", Stephen Bach, who was one of UA's heads of production, places blame for the film mostly on Michael Cimino. I don't dispute that, but Cimino wouldn't have had the opportunity to run amok if Bach had not liked this lousy script. The only bonus feature on the MGM 2000 DVD is a theatrical trailer (1 min). Subtitles are available in French and Spanish.

Heaven's Gate
This 1980 movie is famous for the over budget spending by Director Michael Cimino. United Artists went under as a result. Cimino was such a perfectionist and shot so many millions of feet of film that he was unable to cut down and the first edited version was over 5 hours long. The story depicts the Johnson County War near Casper and Kaycee, Wyoming in the late 1800s. The mostly immigrant settlers were supplementing their meager rations with free ranging stolen beef and the Wyoming Stock Growers Association decided to eliminate the problem by eliminating the settlers. I saw the movie years ago and wanted to review it mainly for the scenery, which is spectacular, the music, done by a young violinist, David Mansfield and the horse and livestock scenes. I know the person who furnished the mexican steers used. They hired a whole semi-load of steers, paid daily rent for nearly 3 months and ended up with about 45 seconds of film of the cattle. Some of the horse scenes show the horses falling in a non humane method where they are tripped instead of the usual way using horses trained to fall. Also the whole cast had to learn to roller skate for one notable scene when Mansfield played the violin while skating in "Heaven's Gate" the name of the settlers Community Hall. Also one of the actors, Allen Keller, was a well known rodeo cowboy. He appears in a few scenes as a 'heavy".

Heaven's Gate
Slow and plodding, but beautifully shot and well worth watching. Although I prefer more action in a western, I also realize that in reality, the "old west" consisted of a slow, plodding existence. (The so-called "REALITY" shows on TV need to take note - There is very little, if any, reality invovlved in those shows).

Worst Ever
I saw this movie when it originally came out. Over the years, whenever people talk about a bad movie and, invariably, will give their opinion on the worst movie they ever saw, I always mention this one as the worst ever made. I describe it as people being shot by machine guns and then the bullet holes being shown close up. They did this multiple times and it's all I can tell you about it because the storyline was so confusing. I know it was about the cattle ranch wars but couldn't tell you much else because it made no sense. Cinematography is all well and good and it can add much to a movie but it can't make a really (really, really) bad movie good no matter how beautifully it was shot.