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Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
EAN: 0085391143512
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Item Dimensions: 25
Label: Warner Home Video
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 5.1EnglishSubtitled
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
MPN: WARD114351D
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 27, 2007
Running Time: 214 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Academy award winning director Oliver Stone presents a breathtaking new cut of his sweeping epic film, ALEXANDER, the true story of the world's greatest warrior. Using new footage and dramatically reshaping dozens of scenes, he brings to life the overpowering forces and fierce personalities that forever changed history. Torn by the war between his parents (Angelina Jolie and Val Kilmer), Alexander (Colin Farrell) left Greece to face massive armies in Persia, Afghanistan and India -- and was never defeated.
Amazon.com:
For better or worse (and in this case, it's mostly for better), Oliver Stone's Alexander Revisited should stand as the definitive version of Stone's much-maligned epic about the great Asian conqueror. Following the DVD release of his previous Director's Cut, Stone offers a video introduction here, explaining why he felt a third and final attempt at refining his film was necessary. Essentially, he's using this opportunity to re-create the "road show" format of the Biblical epics of the 1950s and '60s, with a three-and-a-half-hour running time (with an intermission at the two-hour mark) including 45 minutes of previously unseen footage. Stone has also significantly restructured the film, resulting in substantial (if not exactly redemptive) improvements in its narrative flow. Alexander (played in a torrent of emotions by Colin Farrell) is dying as the film opens, his final moments serving to bookend the film's epic story, which incorporates flashback sequences to flesh out the Macedonian king's back-story involving the turbulent battle of fate between his father, King Philip (Val Kilmer) and his scheming sorceress mother Olympia (Angelina Jolie, ridiculous accent and all), who insists that Alexander is literally a child of the gods.
In Stone's final cut, epic battles remain chaotic (although Alexander's strategy is somewhat easier to follow, with on-screen titles indicating left, right, and center during his army's greatest maneuvers) and the ultra-violent battles are more graphically gory than ever (hence their "unrated" status). The animalistic lovemaking of Alexander and his barbarian bride Roxana (Rosario Dawson) is slightly extended (with Dawson as ravishing as ever), and Stone's additional footage also improves the overall arc of Alexander's relationship with his closest generals and male companions, although his most intimate homosexual encounters remain mostly discreet. As Alexander Revisited makes clear, the film's weaknesses remain unavoidable, but Stone deserves credit for recognizing how a longer running time, and more disciplined narrative structure, would bring Alexander closer to the respect it never earned from critics and filmgoers alike. This is unquestionably a better film than it used to be, leaving us to wonder why it took three separate efforts to shape Alexander into its best possible presentation. --Jeff Shannon
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This is absurd. There are three versions of this film, and each should have a separate set of reviews. Come on, Amazon. Is it so difficult to do this? This is a review of the Blu-ray "Alexander Revisited".
The original cut of "Alexander" was controversial for a single reason... Oliver Stone refused to hide the fact that homosexual behavior was common among the Greeks (usually an older man with a younger). * It's okay to show people having their guts ripped out, but don't you dare show two intimate friends (Alexander and Hephaestion) pledging their life-long loyalty, or a man kissing a eunuch (Bagoas), then having sex with him. And although there are several stories about why Philip was murdered, Stone uses the one in which a young man, a member of his bodyguard and Philip's occasional lover, ** takes revenge when Philip fails to do anything about the young man's rape by other men.
There is also a scene in which the young Alexander is told by Aristotle that women aren't worth loving, and that sex between men -- if it is not simply out of lust, but for the purpose of character development -- is a worthy thing. That must have gotten a lot of viewers' whities tightened.
The real problems with "Alexander" stem from Stone's desire to present a drama, not just an historical epic. Though ancient writers reported Alexander's personality as a mixture of great ambition, high intelligence, and a sometimes uncontrollable rashness, Stone fails to present these in any coherent fashion. Alexander is portrayed as torn between love for Philip (who alternates between love and a refusal to acknowledge him as heir (whether because he believes the child a bastard, or he didn't want a half-Macedonian heir from Olympias, isnt clear)), and his mother, who's constantly pressing him to Do Great Things.
The biggest failing of the script, however, is providing a clear reason for Alexander's heavy drinking and "seduction" by Eastern culture. The result is that a film that's supposed to illuminate one of the most-important people in history leaves us with more questions than we started with.
An even bigger failing is Stone's disastrous casting of Colin Farrell -- who badly wanted to play the part -- as Alexander. Whatever one might think of Farrell's thespic skills, he is in totally over his head. (The blonde wig -- why is Alexander always portrayed as blonde? It looks stupid. -- doesn't help.)
There is no question about Alexander's charisma. (He would have /had/ to been charismatic to command the loyalty of so many men for so long, especially as he shaved his beard, a no-no among Greek males. ***) Farrell gets this very well. It's the subtle moments that don't come off.
Whenever he's disturbed or unhappy or confused, his face takes on the same sappy expression, shaking and twitching to no particular end, other than demonstrating that he can over-emote. The scenes in which he confronts his mother range from incompetent to embarrassing.
The scene in which he bids farewell to the dying Hephaestion is particularly bad. It's perfectly fine for Alexander to cry as he tries to comfort the person he best loves, but Farrell shows an unmanly lack of control. And the little speech in which he tells Hephaestion of all the wonderful things that remain to be done, as he looks out to the world, should have been something quite grand, quite stirring, but Farrell doesn't get much further than reading the lines.
Farrell is the right physical age for Alexander, but not the right emotional age. I remember a hetero guy in college -- not even 20 -- telling me how, when his best friend had died, he had cried himself to sleep for a month. Colin Farrell has either never experienced anything like this, or if he has, cannot convey it in his acting. He fails to bring those elements that would have at least partly compensated for the script's omissions.
Ultimately, an actor's failure can and should be blamed on the director, especially when the director does the casting. For a director such as Oliver Stone, who commands the complexities of such a huge film so effortlessly, this failure is remarkable. How he could have shot himself in the foot is hard to understand.
Nevertheless, "Alexander Revisited" is worth seeing, especially for the generally good script and fine performances from almost everyone but Farrell. (I had some initial problems with Val Kilmer as Philip, as we usually associate Kilmer with youthful roles, but it's an okay performance.)
Visually, "Alexander Revisited" is stunning. I've seen the DVD on a 36" flat-face Sony, and this Blu-ray on a 60" Kuro, and there is no comparison whatever. It's one of those rare films -- such as "Lawrence of Arabia" or "2001" -- that do not come across well on anything less than a large display.
* Contrast "Troy", in which Patroclus was turned from Achilles' ... Read More
Rating:  -
Alexander conquered most of the known world in the BCs. Historically, he was a fighter class man. Unfortunately he was homosexual, dying of grief after his lover passed on. Overall, a decent Holywood effort of bringing the Alexander the Great story to film. Worth seeing maybe once.
Rating: -
third version of oliver stones epic treatment of alexander the great. not having seen first two version, the theatrical and the directors cut, but having them explained on the second disc, the 'final cut' version is significantly and unusually different from either of the first two iterations. for some viewers, stones vision is close to being saved from a colossal bust. the two disc blu ray version with the requisite behind the scenes footage and interviews and especially stone's sons home video, provide a background into mr stone's reasoning and treatment of this limited documented 4th century icon. extensive battles scenes displaying the strategies and grit and blood abound. accurately depicted or not, the political intrigues suffused alexander's life from boyhood to death, to the point of distraction and there was not a small amount of chipping away at our sympathies for the eponymous protagonist. colin farrell was more than adequate as the post pubescent facet of alexander, portraying an energy and confidence as well as a genuine connection with his troops. val kilmer as a volcanic phillip and angelina jolie as alexander's mother, a thoroughly conniving, enigmatic....straddling the line between myth and mortal, greater good and hubris, grasping or equinomic.
the tale is grand, the length is grander, the attempt was grander still. it's worth a look in this final cut. spectacle is a word that comes to mind, but is this a spectacle of a movie or is alexander's extended overreach of geography paralleled with stone's cinematic one?
Rating:  -
'Alexander' was to exclude some 'controversial' material. Restoring that material helps to delineate the character of Alexander and adds perspective to the story.
Rating: -
Colin Farrell is hot, Jared Leto is even hotter. The film looks great and it made me wonder how much more there was to the real story. Unfortunately, this film is split onto 2 discs. I can't figure out why because from what I understand, you can fit about 5 hours of high definition video onto a single blu-ray disc. The film is 213 minutes. I know this may sound petty, but it would've been nice to have the entire film on one disc.
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