It doesn't get any worse than this

Rating: 1/10 (19 November 2004)

I was able to see this movie for free the other night, and though I hadn't had any special plans to go see it before, I decided to give it a shot and go. I had no great expectations, really. I thought it would be a blockbuster in the classic sense, in which I'd be fairly entertained either by acting or grand battles or possibly both. I also imagined that it would be heavier in drama than most epics, as the story of Alexander's life isn't all peaches and bunny rabbits.
After seeing it, I wish I had demanded to be paid for the three hours of my life I'll never get back.
Where to start? The dialogue was horrendous. Cut and pasted from the past five plus years worth of films, it was the Frankenstein of epic dramas. For example, rather than Gladiator's line of "Shadows and dust" we are treated with "sun and shadows."
I was seated in a theater with more than four hundred people, so I know I'm not alone when I say that a majority of the battle scenes, inspiring speeches, and heart wrenching tender moments were outright laughable. The audience cracked up at nearly every important moment in the film, including the imitation Braveheart/Gladiator rallying speech and the various Hephaestion/Alexander moments meant to show us the inner turmoils and fears of the protagonist.
And this doesn't even touch upon the various accents the actors used. I realize the filmmakers were likely trying to make the point that Alexander's army was a mix of different people, including many different kinds of Greeks and Macedonians, by utilizing a variety of types of speech. Still, Irish, Scottish, and English accents accidentally modernized the film and made it even more of a mockery. Angelina Jolie didn't even bother with any of those, but instead opted for an accent so fake that I expected her to list "Moose and Sqvirrel" amongst Alexander's enemies.
Since the drama had clearly fallen on its face early in the film, I kept hoping for the battle scenes to redeem it. Once again I was disappointed, to put it VERY lightly. In three hours we're "rewarded" with only two major battle scenes, which is odd in itself for a movie about a famous conqueror. The majority of both consist of shaky cameras filled mainly with shots of Alexander's army at extreme close-up, or Alexander in slow motion. Phalanx shots are obscured by layers of dust (if we're not watching their marching feet) while the heart of the chaos is cut too fast to watch any one amazing, or even vaguely interesting, battle between individual opponents.
It cannot be argued that it was merely displaying the chaos of real fighting. A movie should have some narrative thread even in a battle, and the absence of one left me feeling separate, an outsider, rather than engaged in the action. There was no suspense. Battles were outright boring, even when the filmmakers tried to shock the audience with massive amounts of blood.
I don't have to room to point out the problems with the terrible score, nor the almost painful-to-watch acting we were subjected to. And considering just how bad this film was, I think everything I've said so far boarders on being too nice.
I will give the movie credit for only one thing: the scenery in Babylon was pretty neat. And for what he was given, Val Kilmer at least managed to pull out an OK character from the mire of this film.