This is one of the worst and most disheartening films I've ever seen. And, unlike some bad movies, it didn't even managed to be a fun ride.
In any normal film circumstance, a brief summarization of the life of Alexander the Great would suffice to give you the gist of the film's plot. However, as the film had no discernibly constructed plot arc, in this case this would be irrelevant overkill.
The film attempts to address Alexander's conquests, personal relationships and family history, and fails at all three.
On the subject of his conquests, the tale is muddied. We are never given a sense as to his motivation, nor a clear explanation of the progress of his empire. We get no hint at matters of his character and skill supported by the historical record -- the intellect, strategy and military genius are never discussed, and the battle scenes are so poorly written that one of them needs subtitles just for the audience to follow it -- this is not a testament to the complexity of Alexander's military techniques, but to bad scripting and structure.
On the subject of his personal life, Stone takes great pains to be comfortable and forthcoming about Alexander's bisexuality (an idea nearly conclusively supported by the historical record), and yet manages to address the subject constantly while being clearly uncomfortable with it. This is distracting, offensive and really dishonorable. In Alexander's relations with women what we're given is equally shallow and uncomfortable, just now with nudity and hissing! I wish I were joking.
And on the subject of Alexander's family, we are graced with awful performances from Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie, both using ridiculous and inappropriate accents. At times Olympias is written as if she's wandered into yet another remake of Manchurian Candidate, and there's not even anything that interesting to say about Kilmer's drunken Philip.
Never once does this film give us a sense of what made Alexander a leader of men or made him beloved of individuals and history. We are not even given ample insight into the reasons he was loathed. And while we get fear and doubt and humanity we get nothing to counter it. Colin Farrell merely looks stunned and miserable throughout the entire film and he was either woefully misdirected or not given any direction at all.
Other film elements are equally bad, with the best performances being merely adequate and in minor roles.
The score is bombastic, distracting and provides no place for emotion to build. We're always at a climax and we don't care.
The sets are fine, but feel like sets, and the costumes and weaponry are mostly historically accurate but never presented in a way that's interesting.
The hair design would have been bad enough to ruin the film had it any redeeming features (other than the horse), and even the opening titles sequence is ugly, nonsensical and practically offensive to anyone who believes that a film has to be about giving the audience something.
Ultimately, Stone's Alexander is a self-indulgent, arrogant, paranoid and miserable piece of trash that is regrettably career-endingly bad. I've never before had the experience of a film making me well-up with tears because it was such a betrayal of its art form, subject and audience.
Normally I talk about whether a film is suitable for teens or children. But this film isn't suitable for anybody, and doesn't deserve your ticket fee.
Academy award winning director Oliver Stone presents a breathtaking new cut of his sweeping epic film, ALEXANDER, the true story of the world's greate...More at HotMovieSale.com
Academy award winning director Oliver Stone presents a breathtaking new cut of his sweeping epic film, Alexander, the true story of the world s greate...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.