Copyright 1980 by Partisan Productions. Released through United Artists. U.S. release: 19 November 1980. 219 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Despite a running time of 3 hours, 39 minutes, I could not follow the plot terribly well. Cimino's powers of exposition are not good. Characters are arbitrarily introduced and the audience is forced for the most part to work out who and what they are and their relationships (if any) to each other. The fact that some of the actors tend to mumble their lines doesn't help either.NOTES: Negative cost: over $35 million. Gross world-wide box-office rentals: less than $2 million. Net loss (including print, advertising and distribution costs): around $45 million. In an effort to boost box-office appeal, the movie was re-edited to 148 minutes. This ploy was not successful on any front.COMMENT: Beautiful to look at. Ugly to look at. Well acted. Poorly acted. Superbly photographed. Self-indulgent direction. Plenty of money up there on the screen. Huge, marvelously atmosphere sets. Hundreds of costumed extras bring many of the scenes to roaring life. Hideous (even if historically justified) brutality. Motivations of the leading characters are so obscure, the movie is really a film without a hero, although there are many villains strutting across the screen. At least the evil Waterston character is easily identified, but what are we to make of Mr. Hurt? If I was re-editing the movie, his part would be the first to go. He seems to be enacting the conscience of the rich, but though he is always mouthing endless platitudes against them, he always sides with them anyway and is himself a party to the murders which he so loquaciously condemns.

Arguably one of the most self-indulgent movies ever made. Heaven's Gate is the ultimate paradox of epic and empty. Few movies are as beautiful as this one, or as boring.Michael Cimino's account of the Johnston country war is like a museum of epic paintings, beautifully shot but void of intelligent dialogue and sympathetic characters.Kris Kristopherson goes through the movie as if he is suffering from a hangover, dreary and dull. Christopher Walken and Isabelle Huppert fair somewhat better but the problem is that Cimino is incapable of finding his characters motivation, so everyone seems lost. There is a major absence of backstory in this movie, and instead we have numerous 'cast of hundreds' scenes that are stretched out beyond any reason other than Cimino is in love with the images.Cimino is more interested in telling the story through the picture than through the writing, and he in so ham fisted in his approach that Heaven's Gate feels like a 1920's propaganda film by Griffith or Eisenstein. He doesn't seem to appreciate that movies have changed since then and so have moviegoers. For the audience it takes three seconds to comprehend a message that Cimino takes four minutes to convey. The sound mix is also bombastic, mainly because long segments of dialogue are inaudible behind the cacophony of horses and carriages. The only memorable about Heavens Gate is the photography, everything else is a waste.

Learning of a plot to slaughter immigrants, a Wyoming sheriff takes action in this sprawling western from Michael Cimino. The film boasts detailed period sets, mobile camera-work from Vilmos Zsigmond and a talented ensemble cast, and yet it is easy to see why this was a commercial flop. For all the extra character detail that we get due to the enormous length and leisurely pace, there is little tension and sense of imminent danger. Kris Kristofferson has some great moments early on as he reacts in horror to Sam Waterston's speeches about killing immigrants, but his disgust is often sidelined as the movie progresses. He has time to romance brothel ladies and roller-skate without any urgency to stopping the planned slaughter and the characters outside of Kristofferson are dull. John Hurt has some solid moments as a college chum whose idealism has turned to cynicism as an adult, but the rest of the cast feel wasted. The film has some great touches for sure, and with a slowed The Blue Danube Waltz sublimely appearing on the soundtrack near the end plus several detailed battle scenes, the film is not an entire waste. This is, however, a movie for which its checkered history is more fascinating than the films itself, with the bloated near four-hour final product the direct result of Cimino being given carte blanche after winning two Oscars for 'The Deer Hunter' two years earlier.

I agree with Jack Landman. Twenty years ago I saw a butchered version of Heaven's Gate on a 23 inch TV screen. In retrospect, it was pointless. Despite being a film buff I don't remember if the film was shown on the big screens here in Blighty. Finally, thirty-seven years after its release, I've seen the 217 minutes version on Blu-Ray on a 56 inch Cinemascope TV screen with digital sound. It's a magnificent achievement and I salute the late Cimino for having the guts and persistence to hold out for his personal vision and artistic creation.I'm not sure where to begin. Yes, there are longeurs, in the roller-skating scenes, for example, and yes, some dialogue is difficult to pick up. Nevertheless, the set design, acting, particularly by Kristofferson, Huppert and Walken, and landscape photography by Vilmos Zsigmond and Cimino's directing are flawless. The film is beautiful, moving, disturbing and sometimes exciting. Cimino makes us care about his characters and shows us something of what frontier life must have been like in the final years of the 19th century. There's a backbone of fact in the grim events of the Johnson County War that makes a reading of contemporary historical accounts essential.Heaven's Gate is all a great film should be. It has the sweep of David Lean and touches of Sam Peckinpah in the final battle scenes. They rank with those at the end of The Wild Bunch. Praise doesn't come much higher than that!