 | |
List Price: $12.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 5796
Released: February 27, 2007 |
| Our Price: $6.22 |
| Used Price: $4.50 |
|
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Now available is an all new and completely unrated version of Oliver Stone's incredible epic film, loaded with nearly 40 minutes of additional never-before-seen footage, that takes the film to a new level of realism and intensity. Restructured and expanded into two acts with one intermission, Oliver Stone's vision is delivered the way he originally conceived and intended. With the new, unrated and graphic battle scenes and unadulterated sensuality, it's the movie you couldn't see in theatres, now available on DVD for the very first time!
DVD Features:
Introduction
Theatrical Trailer
Description of Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition):
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
Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition) Reviews:
GREAT MOVIE ON BLU-RAY 
2008-09-06 - THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER ON BLU-RAY WITH THE high def.
also the extended edition add a lot more to the story especially the romance between colin and jared scenes.
recommend the blu-ray very highly. you see more detail of the cities and they sparkle like jewels.
Flip a coin 
2008-09-06 - Director Oliver Stone's film version of the life of Alexander the Great, came out to dismal reviews and worse box office. There were controversies over its portrayal of the bisexuality of its protagonist, as well as the poor screenplay, stilted dialogue, and many other things.... We get the requisite battles, the CGI armies of huge hordes, but Stone's camera work is not what it was a decade or more ago. There is very little that sets this apart as an Oliver Stone film. It's a generic pseudo-epic that makes the great epics, like Spartacus, or Lawrence Of Arabia, seem that much greater. I guess there's just a simple lack of passion in the whole endeavor. What saves the film from being total trash, however, is Val Kilmer's relationship with Alexander- mostly as a boy (Connor Paolo), but also with the older Farrell. Kilmer's best moment comes when he demands buying a horse at half price if Alexander can tame it. The son, of course, tames it, in generic rite of passage form, but the key that makes this otherwise trite scene work is how Philip will to risk his son's life merely for a bargain. It shows why the two men will bond, but never be truly close.... In short, Alexander fails not for many of the reasons the major critics roasted it (although to be fair, I don't know just how different the filmic and DVD versions are) but because it has too much breadth, and not enough depth. Accordingly- while not terrible, it's not great. Flip a coin over whether it's passable and either way you're probably right.
Wrong Leads
2008-09-01 - Oliver Stone's "Alexander Revisited" has quite a lot going for it, sweeping shots of gorgeous mountaintops, epic battles, stunning and shockingly realistic in nature and a story of a legend named Alexander. What it doesn't have is an actor worthy of portraying this tormented dreamer, bent on conquering all of Asia. Stone has Colin Farrell, with bleached blonde hair and some of the worst line reading in history.
Although Farrell isn't alone in his campy and over reaching acting skills, we have Angelina Jolie doing the best 'Natasha' voice since Rene Russo in the "Rocky and Bullwinkle", and the poorest acting by pretty-boy Jared Leto, in quite some time.
I never did view the chopped up mess that hit the theatres, this version is a little long and heavy on dialogue and light on action. but if they only chose different actors, this one would have been a masterpiece in waiting.
Alexander Revisited
2008-08-22 - I liked Alexander Revisited so much that I have watched it at least a dozen times. It has plenty of "realistic" action but also gets into the psychology of its characters. I have much respect for the director Oliver Stone for having the courage to portray the "real" Alexander, unlike Wolfgang Petersen, the director of Troy who tried to pawn Achelles' lover Petrocolus off as his "cousin." That was contemptable. The truth was that Alexander showed little personal interest in women. The fact that he was bi-sexual (at most) did not detract from his being a colossus.
Jared Leto was very convincing as Alexander's general and lover Hephaestian, not to mention that he was gorgeous. I am sorry Francisco Bosch who played the eunuch Bagoas didn't get a higher billing as his character was important and he did a great job. I think they could have found someone more suited than Colin Farrell to play Alexander. For one thing, he looked nothing like him. Alexander was "more beautiful" than that. The horse that played Alexander's horse Bucephalus was an incredibly majestic animal! What a warrier!
I read in one review that Stone didn't stick to the facts. I disagree. It isn't easy to cram a life like that in three and a half hours, but the few things he altered were either to adher to the time limit or possibly for effect. The way Alexander found Bagoas was "simplified," and Bucephalus did not die in battle, but of old age at thirty. The general Cassander was one of the few of Alexander's boyhood companions not in his army because they hated each other. But I'm glad Stone included him because Jonathan Rhys Myers who played that role is one of my favorites. I'm sorry they didn't make more of the death of Hephaestian as in truth Alexander went into what some called a psychotic rage that lasted for sometime and had far-reaching consequences. Angelina Jolie as Alexander's mother Olympius was magnificant, and again, authentic, even down to the snakes.
Third time the charm? 
2008-07-30 - I quite liked the director's cut version of Alexander, while not being a great film it was something about it that I found fascinating so when I heard about this Final Cut I knew I had to see it. I think the movie is better this way, a lot better infact, but it will never be a great movie. There's something lacking and I can't quite put my finger on what it is.
I was hoping for a director's commentary (I think Oliver Stone's commentary track for the Platoon was superb) but I had to settle for an introduction. No other extras, this is just the movie.
I would recommend this to those who liked the previous incarnations of this movie, but I don't really think this cut will change anyone's view of the movie. Either you liked it to begin with (if so I recommend this cut), or you didn't (then I recommend you see the 4-hour cut of Kingdom of Heaven instead).
