This movie will make Alexander turn over in his grave!

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2004)

This movie gets 1 out of 10.
Wow! This movie sucks. I mean really! It is bad. With a star-studded cast, a high budget, and a biography of a fascinating conqueror, you would think this movie would be great! Unfortunately it is not.
The movie is about Alexander the Great, the Greek conqueror who conquered Egypt, Persia and up to the fringes of India by the time he was in his early thirties.
I remember reading about him in my world history class back in school and being fascinated about his life and his exploits. I eagerly anticipated the making of this movie hoping it would measure up to my expectation but it did not.
The movie was constantly going forward and backward in telling his life which made the movie chaotic. Maybe Oliver Stone was trying to be like Tarantino; if that is so, he failed.
Stone skirted the issue of Alexander's homosexuality by not revealing his this issue openly. Alexander's homosexuality should not be a controversy because he was. In our time, homosexuality is a big issue but during that time, in Greek society, it was a big deal. In fact, the Greek ideal relationship is between a grown man and a young boy.
In history, there has always been speculation whether Alexander was part of the plot to kill his father King Philip of Macedon because Philip had just taken another wife who had bore him a male child. This issue should have been more in the beginning of the story, but instead, it was shown in the middle of the movie.
I could keep going on and on with examples but you get the picture. Moreover, the battle scenes, while good, was not great.
Prior to the release of this movie, I saw a three hour documentary of Alexander on the History channel on cable television. It was fantastic. It literally blows away this movie ten times over. The story is told from the biography of Alexander, written by an ancient Greek and two Roman citizens. I believe one of the Romans only concentrated on Alexanders early years.
Anyway, if you really want to know about Alexander, his life, and his exploits, then go check that out, or better yet, go buy a book on his life.