Product Description

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10094 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-09-18
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 213 minutes

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

From The New Yorker
Beware the long-cherished project. That is one of the lessons handed down by Oliver Stone's bio-pic of Alexander the Great, upon which the director has ruminated for many years. Somebody less obsessed by the undertaking might have given us less to laugh about; as things stand, we gaze at Colin Farrell, in the leading role, and wonder if Alexander was impelled to reach the limits of the known world purely in order to forget the tragedy of his wig. Farrell looks deeply grieved in his part, as does Jared Leto, who has the unhappy task of portraying Hephaistion, the general's abiding lover. The story, narrated by the aged Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) and unfolding in flashback, takes us from a princely boyhood in Macedonia, under the raging rule of Val Kilmer, to the rout of Darius at Gaugamela in 331 B.C. (clearly the heart of the picture, with a wild beat), and so on, eastward, all the way to an elephant-infested India. Many viewers will find nearly three hours of plotless history, alternately savage and sluggish, a little hard to stomach, and they will turn with relief to those performers who treat the whole enterprise as the highest form of kitsch-Angelina Jolie, as Alexander's mother, and Rosario Dawson, as his wife. When these two are onscreen, all thoughts of Homeric heroism are flung aside, and we can settle down to enjoy the movie for what it is: the "Showgirls" of the ancient world. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

From the Studio
Comes with the paperback guide Barbecue: 101 Essential Tips (ISBN 0756602203).

Customer Reviews

Third time the charm?
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).

Average...
Although visually a great Blu-ray, Alexander is NOT your typical epic battle movie, I found myself wanting to throw in 300 after the first hour or so.

Wonderful Movie
This movie is simply amazing. If all you want is blood and gore this probably isn't the movie for you, it goes much deeper into the inner character of Alexander.