BlinkDash

In short, the film was a flop (though it would eventually make back its production costs). Under ordinary circumstances, it might have simply been forgotten by all but collectors of massive cinematic disasters. However, even as he was reestablishing his career with such films as "World Trade Center," "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" and "Savages," it appeared as Stone was unwilling to simply let "Alexander" fade into the mists of misbegotten screen history. In 2005, when the film, which originally ran for 175 minutes arrived on DVD, Stone prepared a "Director's Cut" that saw him restructure some elements, delete 25 minutes of footage and add 17 minutes of unseen scenes into a 167-minute version that was actually shorter than the original. And yet, Stone still couldn't get the story out of his system and in 2007, he released a so-called "Final Cut" that replaced the deleted 25 minutes along with another 40 minutes of additional scenes making their debut in a version that, after the trimming of some now superfluous material, now clocked in at 214 minutes.

With the film's 10th anniversary approaching, Stone has returned to the project that has obsessed him for nearly two decades with "Alexander: The Ultimate Cut," a 207-minute-long refinement of the "Final Cut," which he promises will be his final say on the subject and was recently released on Blu-ray. Even in a film culture in which there are at least five separate cuts of "Blade Runner" floating around, this might seem at first blush to be overkill on Stone's part and begs the question of whether this new and final version can possibly rehabilitate the terrible reputation that the film has been carrying around since its initial release. The various expansions and rejiggerings have improved it immeasurably, and what was once a head-scratching mess has reformed into an undeniably fascinating example of epic cinema.

Like many observers at the time of its original release, I thought that Stone had stumbled badly with "Alexander" in ways that almost defied reason. The essentially straightforward narrative was a surprisingly safe choice for a filmmaker who was usually more inventive. The one major diversion from the chronology—a lengthy flashback to the murder of Alexander's father, King Phillip of Macedonia (Val Kilmer), that lead to his ascension to the throne—came so late in the proceedings and lasted so long that it felt like an afterthought and brought the whole thing to a dead halt. The narration by the elderly version of Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), one of Alexander's trusted aides, felt like something tacked on to help guide viewers who might not be versed in the particulars of the subject at hand. Having suggested that his film would deal in a straightforward manner with Alexander's bisexuality, Stone chickened out on the man-on-man aspect by eliminating all but a couple of brief, longing glances between Alexander and his childhood friend Hephastion (Jared Leto), while emphasizing a hot and heavy sex scene between him and bride Roxane (Rosario Dawson) and the sexual tension between him and his mother Olympias (an aspect underlined by casting Angelina Jolie as the hero's mother despite being only a year older than Farrell).

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