Jim Morrison, the lead singer and lyricist of the Doors, was equal parts poet, provocateur and snake-oil salesman. You might say the same of Oliver Stone, the writer-director (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July) who has turned Morrison's short life -- he died of heart failure in 1971 at the age of twenty-seven -- into a film of wretched and splendid excess. You expect in-your-face from Stone and Morrison. Both are products of the turbulent Sixties. The decade jazzed them, molded their sensibilities, taught them that art should be violent and dangerous: Feel it, mock it, even fake it, but keep it larger than life.

The Doors is a thrilling spectacle -- the King Kong of rock movies -- featuring a starmaking, ball-of-fire performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison. I can't recall a film that evokes the myth of the Sixties more potently. It's not all free love, psychedelic drugs and electric blues, either. The cruelty, delusion and self-destruction are included, along with the dopey hippie rhetoric. Stone goes to extremes -- the movie is too much of everything -- but the eerily alluring music of the Doors helps him capture the dark side of a decade.

Excerpt from Rolling Stone magazine located HERE