Courtesy of Thailand's royal family, which fronted a $15 million budget and the extravagant resources at its disposal, the nascent Thai film industry produced its first homegrown blockbuster in The Legend Of Suriyothai, a lumbering 16th-century epic that took the country by storm. Originally running nearly five hours, the film was intended as a history lesson for Thai schoolchildren, but it seems more like a gold-tinted Cecil B. DeMille spectacle refashioned as nationalist propaganda. For the American release, producer Francis Ford Coppola supervised a cut that chucked roughly half the film into the editing bin, leaving only enough connective tissue to tell the story in the broadest strokes, no matter the damage to pacing, character development, and historical context. Under the circumstances, it's hard to speculate what the long cut might be like, but the tattered remains are at best a diverting mess that reduce the dramatic and bloody birth of a nation to a colorful pop-up book. For those unschooled about the political fissions and competing bloodlines in 1528 Siam, the conflicts within the country's two royal kingdoms and from the Burmese invaders to the north are better accepted at face value, because their differences are never explicated, at least in the Coppola cut. Still, it's easy to see why audiences were swept up by the sheer scope of the movie, which litters the battlefields and palaces with thousands of extras, throngs of real elephants, and an eyeful of costumes, icons, and other period bric-a-brac. In the northern kingdom of Ayothaya, the rebellious Princess Suriyothai (M.L. Piyapas Bhirombhakdi) falls in love with Lord Pirenthorathep (Chatchai Plengpanich), a brave and noble warrior, but chooses a marriage of convenience to the equally honorable Prince Thienraja (Sarunyu Wongkrachang) in order to avoid civil war. As the years pass, Suriyothai and the forces of good are subject to numerous threats to their power, including a diabolical coup attempt by a low-ranking U-Thong singer and a ruthless Lady Macbeth figure pulling the strings. All this intrigue builds to a massive Burmese invasion in which Suriyothai inspires the troops by sheathing herself in armor and making the ultimate sacrifice for her country. Written and directed by Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol, The Legend Of Suriyothai appears to be an authentic and undeniably sumptuous evocation of the period, doing great service to the Thai royal family's prestige, if not its people and history. The flickers of a grand melodramatic vision in the American cut might well exist wholly polished in the Thai release, but when a movie sheds half its running time, it becomes a skeleton without the body. The fact that the story makes sense at all remains Coppola and his butchers' sole achievement.