Alexander DVD Review

"ALEXANDER" reviews

DVD

ALEXANDER

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-27 22:16:48

Provider

DVD Review

In a long career, dating back to his screenplays for Midnight Express and Scarface, via Platoon and JFK, Oliver Stone has been accused of many things: being overblown, hysterical, biased and even racist. With Alexander, for the first time some have used the word boring but that's not entirely fair. The movie does have its highlights. And no, not just the ones in Colin Farrell's hair.

The three-hour historical epic tells the story of the great Macedonian leader who conquered the known world centuries before the Romans. It's a tale that lends itself well to all those familiar Stone hyper-sentiments, as the Great One (that's Alexander, not Oliver) builds the first huge empire.

Fans of epic movies will appreciate the scale of the film and the historic element, regardless of artistic licence or inaccuracies. Angelina Jolie hams it up a bit but Farrell's performance beneath that hair isn't bad at all and will provide good, occasional Sunday viewing.

The DVD includes audio commentary by Oliver Stone and Historian/Alexander biographer Robin Lane Fox plus three featurettes - Resurrecting Alexander, Perfect Is The Enemy Of God and The Death Of Alexander.