Alexander - Director's Cut (Full Screen Edition)
by Oliver Stone
List Price:
Our Price: $1.97
You Save: $11.01 (85%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, Rosario Dawson, Val KilmerDirector: Oliver Stone
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Oliver Stone
Producer: Aslan Nadery
Producer: Fernando Sulichin
Producer: Gianni Nunnari
Producer: Hans De Weers
Writer: Christopher Kyle
Writer: Laeta Kalogridis
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 175 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-02
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Alexander - Director's Cut (Full Screen Edition)
DVD Review: The intertwined power of subtlety and boldness drive this movie to great heights
Summary: 5 Stars
To start off, I can understand why people initially hated this movie. When I first watched it and it ended, the best reaction I could manage was "Uhh...okay, that was...interesting." That's my way of saying it was okay, but not that good. But there was something nagging in my mind that kept telling me to look at it again, to look deeper.
I didn't watch the movie again until it came out on DVD, and by that point, the director's cut was what I was presented with. The new version of the movie is restructured to make it flow more smoothly with some scenes added, some dropped. And indeed, it does seem easier to watch than when I saw it in theaters.
When I watched the movie, it recaptured something I realized when I was walking out of the movie theater the first night I had viewed it: it was brilliant. Absolutely, undeniably brilliant. To get to the heart of it in a single word, the movie was about love, in all of its ambiguous forms. Alexander's love for his father, his mother, Hephaistion, and most poignantly, his love of glory. Maybe that seems too romantic to those people who expected a war film bloated with brutality and death, but Alexander was too complicated a man to be reduced to the single role of 'warrior'.
An old Ptolemy, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, narrates the life of Alexander the Great, and one must realize that this narration is essential to understanding many of the complexities of that life. Played with enigmatic passion by Colin Farrell, Alexander is explored as a man of deep, inner conflicts. His seductive and manipulative mother, Queen Olympias, brought to life by the beautiful Angelina Jolie, pushes her son to heights of glory beyond fear or doubt. The tension is portrayed well by Farrell and Jolie, as is their closeness. The father, King Philip, is played by Val Kilmer and the actor plays the promiscuous, drunken, emotionally unstable character well, showing a very different kind of tension betweeen Alexander and his father. Farrell delivers a line that explains it well enough: "My mother thought me divine, my father weak."
That line was given to Hephaistion, played by Jared Leto. Leto, having to fill a very mysterious, yet important role, is magnetic in a way that many people fail to notice. To explain this, one must indefinitely mention the arena of Alexander's pan-sexuality. Alexander successfully conquered most of the known world, and yet people are worrying about who he slept with. Conclusion: a bit on the shallow side, but it is, of course, the prerogative of the viewer to swim on that side of the pool.
In the movie, Hephaistion is the long-haired man who is always close to Alexander, watching events with a piercing, blue-eyed gaze. Roger Ebert said that Hephaistion is in the background too much, considering how close he was to Alexander, but I think this works well. If you look closely at Hephaistion during different scenes, you realize that Alexander needs him and that the subtlety of this need actually enhances this premise. Three scenes that come to mind are Alexander and Hephaistion on the balcony (duh), the brawl with Cleitus, and the momentary conflict between Alexander and Kassander before Alexander's marraige to Roxane, the exotically beautiful girl played by Rosario Dawson. Not only do these scenes reinforce this idea, but its significance cannot be ignored when you take two other things into account. The Egyptian ring, given to Alexander by Hephaistion and worn on the ring finger of Alexander's left hand--hmmm... I wonder what that might signify, since MARRAIGE isn't a dead giveaway. Also, Hephaistion's death, which parallels the death of Alexander's dream and initiates the onset of an irreversible loneliness.
The love between them, a love that goes deeper than physical desire, keeps Alexander sane because without Hephaistion, Alexander's dreams (rather progressive for his time) lack a certain substance. Alexander confides in Hephaistion as a soulmate, sharing his hopes and dreams. This transcends the sexual aspect that so many people insisted the movie needed in order to validate their love. Again, your perception of this depends on which end of the pool you swim in.
Ultimately, the portrayal of different relationships, the stunning cinematography, the intense battle scenes, and Oliver Stone's extraordinary use of subtlety serve to propel this epic vision of a young man who achieved more before the age of 32 than most of us do in a lifetime. Yes, he was troubled. Yes, he was bisexual, pan-sexual even. Yes, the ideas this movie confronted were controversial and bold in the extreme. But as Virgil so adequately put, "Fortune favors the bold." Oliver Stone may not have satisfied the over-analytical minds of critics paid for opinions that focused on such trivial things as Colin Farrell's blonde hair, but his boldness has captured my imagination; maybe it can capture yours.
P.S. Watch the movie with Oliver Stone's commentary; it will give you a better look into the why's and how's of the film. You have to have an open mind to appreciate movies like these and Stone has a knack for creating stories that demand us to approach them in this way.
Description of Alexander - Director's Cut (Full Screen Edition)
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. "Fortune favors the bold" Stone powerfully demonstrates in this bold new film, ALEXANDER DIRECTOR'S CUT.DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Oliver Stone
Documentaries
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
Bestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Braveheart (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)Paramount; Release date: 2007-12-18; Published: 2007-12-01; DVD
Best price: $6.27
Price in other shops:
The Last Samurai (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-05-04; DVD
Best price: $0.94
Price in other shops:
Alexander the GreatTCFHE/MGM; Release date: 2004-10-19; DVD
Best price: $1.89
Price in other shops:
Miami Vice (Unrated Director's Cut)NBC Universal; Release date: 2006-12-05; DVD
Best price: $0.88
Price in other shops:
300 (Single-Disc Widescreen Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2007-07-31; DVD
Best price: $2.94
Price in other shops:
The New World: The Extended CutNEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2008-10-14; DVD
Best price: $3.44
Price in other shops:
King Arthur - The Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition)Buena Vista Home Video; Release date: 2004-12-21; DVD
Best price: $1.00
Price in other shops:
Gladiator (Single-Disc Widescreen Edition)MCA; Release date: 2003-08-19; Published: 2003-08-01; DVD
Best price: $5.69
Price in other shops:
Kingdom of Heaven (2-Disc Widescreen Edition)Fox; Release date: 2005-10-11; DVD
Best price: $5.68
Price in other shops:
Troy (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2005-01-04; DVD
Best price: $3.92
Price in other shops: