Product Description

Warner Brothers Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut (Unrated) (Blu-ray)
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!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4739 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-09-18
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds
• 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

Wrong Leads
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
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?
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).