| Alexander | | Cast : | Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie | | Director : | Oliver Stone | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Director's Cut, Widescreen | | Released Date : | November 24, 2004 | | DVD Released Date : | August 02, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | Oliver, Oliver, Oliver... | Content
 | I was prepared to skewar this edition. I liked the theatrical release (and I bought both versions on DVD), and I had heard that the director's cut was going to be butchered and/or dumbed down.
I should learn not to read reviews before something is out.
The flaws of the movie, from the historical point-of-view are still there. Any movie I've seen have the same type of problems. It would be difficult to show even a year of Alexander's reign in three hours much less an overview of his life (and this is what the movie is...an overview from Oliver Stone's perspective).
That much said, if this would have been the cut released to the theaters, the movie probably would not have been a flop in the US. It is much more linear (still some flashbacks). Colin's whining doesn't seem to be so dramatic in this cut, and Jolie's accent seems not so extreme. The narration of Ptolomy also seems to make a bit more sense.
To be honest, if this cut would have been the theatrical release, the movie probably would have won the Oscar for Best Picture.
For the detractors, watch this version. For those who enjoyed the original version, you'll enjoy this one, too. For those who haven't seen the movie, watch this version and then watch the original version.
Highest rating for a movie that I can give. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | Stone's biggest problem is that he made this film for me | Content
| I loved Alexander, but then I'm a classical Greek and Roman history nut. Three years ago, I decided to work my way through history from the Bronze Age to the present. I haven't been able to get past the Greeks and Romans. Every time I read something like Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides or Xenophon, I'm lead somewhere else that's equally worthy of my time.
Without question, Alexander the Great is one of the most fascinating figures in history. The only one I can think of to rival him is Julius Caesar, who, ironically, shared both his voracious appetite for power and his sexual ambiguity. I found Stone's biopic to be very true to the Alexander I read about in history. He was a man capable of both great compassion and great rage. He very much wore his heart on his sleeve, which is why he could murder a close friend over an insult and then wail with grief after the friend died. In many ways, Alexander was too big for this world. How could one country, one lover or one sexual orientation satisfy him?
I think mainstream movie goers weren't ready for Alexander. When they go to a sandal and sword epic, they want to see Mel Gibson, Russell Crow or Tom Cruise wade into a nice ordered battle with his sword swinging. They want to see the opposing army die easily and not leave a scratch, like they are supposed to. Then they want to see their hero come back home to the waiting arms of his female partner where they can have passionate but civilized sex. I'm afraid that's not the way it was. Battles were, and are, chaotic messes where the dust, noise and action made it difficult to tell what's going on. Bisexuality was commonplace in Ancient Greece, in fact it was state-sanctioned in Sparta. It makes me laugh when people criticize films for being too formulaic. Then a film like this comes along and everybody complains that it lacks cohesion. In other words, it doesn't follow the formula. The film seems disjointed and complicated because Alexander's life was disjointed and complicated.
Stone is clearly a fellow student of history and has a particular affinity for Alexander. This comes across in the wondrous battle sequences. Stone brought the Battle of Gaugamela to life and did it right! The infantry is in phalanx formation, the dust is flying and one flank of the army has absolutely no idea what the other flank is doing. This is exactly the way it happened.
If I have any criticism for this film it is that Stone didn't give the whole story. Clearly, if the film is to have any value in the future then it will be among people like me who share his passion for history. I think he might have been better served to do a miniseries for cable where he could have taken his time and shown the razing of Thebes and some of the other important events that happened in Alexander's life. He probably wouldn't have gotten the budget he did but I don't think he needed all of the A-list stars he had. This story is good enough to tell itself.
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| Rating | | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | How to be a homosexual without really trying | Content
| It amazes me how many modern historians and film makers take a few references to homosexuality in Greek history and try to manipulate that to mean that sexuality was rampant during the time. The fact of the matter is that that kind of "practice" wasn't commonly accepted and would have been shunned. But here, as Aristotle makes his first appearance we listen to a speach intended for little boys on how wonderful homosexuality is. And, of course, the soldiers while not doing battle look like they belong in NYC Soho.
Then they take their liberal agenda (then again, these days there isn't much difference between conservative and liberals)and they make Roxana a black African woman while she was in fact a Caucasioid of Persian descent.
Alexander the movie is a blatant attempt to take modern "values" and impose them on the past. It is an attempt to convince people that todays agenda's were accepted by a great man and that because of this we should embrace these ideas. Sure, they are lies but the average person doesn't really care about the truth, and apparantly neither do any of the people who were responsible for making this movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | Another Barbarians on the Battlefield, Back in the day . | Content
| Braveheart, Gladiator, Last Samurai, Troy ...I think the Rock did something but who cared?
Oliver Stone must have meant for this movie to be more of an educational history lesson than entertainment. The scenes go back and forth in time 40 years, 10 years, 9 years... once or twice is enough!! Your attention span is only 8 seconds, how could they think that is NOT annoying!?
The homosexuality turned my stomach but it was part of the history and at least the had the courtesy of not putting Alexander in bed with his "bbuddy" like they did with his wife. Hopefully Colin would'nt want that on his resume in bold.
"2005 Alexander - exceptional performance; in bed with naked man scene"
You almost wanted to give this movie 2 stars but you have to give them credit for scenery and the acting of some of the other stars. Angelina Jolie grabbed her role by the horns in this movie. Excellent acting and she fit right in. The elephants in battlefield woods of India was some unique footage you just don't see. It was wise not to have too many battles out in the field scenes. They're important to the story but unless it's a main character fighting, it slows the story down and becomes just a time-filler.
So this tall bearded warrior with a thick Scottish accent comes out of the crowd, one of Alexander's soliders, to speak his mind during one of Alexander's speeches. ...uhh ok, did one of Mel Gibson's soldiers get lost and decide to go hang out in Asia for the belly dances? ...or are they just trying to cheat some
Celtic appeal into the movie cause they know it works. Now where'd they get THAT idea?
Ever since Braveheart all the movie actors in their prime want to get a piece of the ancient battlefield action. Let's hope the next movie like this does better. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | Epic Hubris | Content
| Viewers who expect an epic display of world conquest will be extremely disappointed in Oliver Stone's ALEXANDER, which includes exactly two fairly brief battle sequences in its three hour running time. The film is not about conquest; it is an attempt to create a character study of one of history's most self-contradictory and enigmatic figures.
The emphasis, however, should be on the word "attempt." ALEXANDER fails in three basic ways: in its cast, in its refusal to meet certain character issues head-on, and in a directorial decision that easily ranks among the most serious misfires in recent memory.
Alexander the Great was a charismatic, self-contradictory, and enigmatic leader who led and inspired the largest army the world had seen up to that point. He was a battle-tested killing machine by age sixteen, King of Macedonia by twenty, conqueror of the known world by thirty-and above all one of the great military geniuses of his or any other age. Colin Farrell plays the character as a weak-minded, emotionally distraught entity, going through the entire film with a series of facial expressions that would lead you to believe he is in desperate need of a dose of salts. It is completely impossible to accept him in the role.
Although Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie give acceptable if not particularly memorable performances as King Philip and Queen Olympias, the remaining performances are equally impossible. Jared Leto's Hephaistion looks for all the world like a Malibu hooker afflicted by an eyeliner addiction; it is impossible to perceive him as Alexander's military whip. Franciso Bosch's Bagoas could be an ancient-world version of Cher after a particularly thick night, albeit with better cleavage. As for Queen Roxane, history notes that she was an unattractive minor tribal princess that Alexander found annoying but whom he married in order to secure military aid from her father. The role, however, is considerably revised, and while Rosario Dawson gives it all she has the part plays like something out of bondage skin flick.
During the film's theatrical release some audiences complained that Alexander was portrayed as a homosexual. Unfortunately for those who come unhinged over such matters, you cannot offer a psychological portrait of Alexander without indicating his general indifference to women and putting him in bed with at least two men: the general Hepaistion and the eunuch and sex slave Bagoas. That is who Alexander was; that was what the ancient world was like. But instead of meeting this issue head-on, the film attempts to "indicate" the relationships through a series of longing gazes, the occasional caress, and some of the most embarrassingly bad dialogue ever written for the screen. The resulting relationships read like something off a television soap opera that has been canceled halfway into the first season.
For the sexually insecure, there is a DVD issue that deletes some eight minutes of this footage; although I went with the unedited version, and although the scenes in question are very badly done, I cannot imagine the deletion of these largely cringe-inducing scenes improves the film to any significant degree-largely because virtually everything about the film is no less awkward.
The script is at best mediocre and the story line so incoherent that Anthony Hopkins is required to provide constant narration-something that has the effect of telling us what happened rather than allowing us to see it happen. But by far the greatest failing of the script and story line is Oliver Stone's decision to present a chunk of the story, such as it is, out of sequence.
In essence, the first half hour of the film establishes the tri-fold conflict between King Philip, Queen Olympias, and the young Alexander and runs up to a major confrontation. At this point the film suddenly jumps eight years ahead to the invasion of Persia, and the jump does not read as intentional but as an outrageous, unexpected, and disastrous flaw in the film. Approximately two hours later the film presents this "lost time" in the form of a flashback-but by this point the purpose of the scenes have been lost and we've all figured out the details anyway. Oliver Stone is a master of creating parallel storylines and time lines. One need look no further than JFK to see his skill. It is astonishing, utterly astonishing, that he could do no better than this and, not being able to do better, did not find a better way entirely.
When all is said and done, Alexander is presented as an out-of-control weakling, his psychological motivations are hilariously pat at best, and it is utterly impossible to imagine that this person could command such a large force, much less lead it to a single victory, much less conquer the known world. Clearly Stone was attempting to reach a new height in epic cinema, but the Greeks had a word for ill-advised ambition founded on a god-like arrogance: hubris. It was a sin they believed was never left unpunished, and in this instance the punishment is a career-crippling, if not entirely career-killing, film.
As noted, there are several DVD versions, including a director's cut that removes approximately fifteen minutes, eight of them dealing with Alexander's sexuality. Bonuses include documentaries on the making of the film and on composer Vangelis, who scored it, as well as an amazingly beside-the-point commentary by director Stone and historian Robin Lane Fox.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer |
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