Alexander Revisited: a review

Rating: 5/10 (20 June 2009)

Because of the success of Lord of the Rings and Gladiator, historical epics have become big business. 2004 became the year of modern sword-and-sandal epics, Troy, King Arthur and Alexander. On paper Alexander should have been Oscars gold, it had a big name director, Oliver Stone and it's about possibly the greatest general the world has ever known. Sadly, the film was a flop.
Alexander looks at a few key moments of Alexander the Great's (Colin Farrell) life, the death of his father Philip II, the conquest of Persia, his marriage to Roxana (Rosario Dawson), relationship with Hephaestion (Jared Leto) and mother Queen Olympias (Angelina Jolie), his fail conquest of India and his rebellious army and generals. It is show in flash-forwards and flash-back, and shows how Alexander goes naive in Persia, becoming more Persian then Greek, leading to conflict with his generals. It also shows his drive to conquer over anyone who challenged him, and set out to unite the world. He wanted to make a united world where people were treated equally.
The Revisited version is 3 hours 30 minutes, a very long film and much of it is wasted. Instead on forcing on the politics and the military aspects, the film ponders and becomes very boring. The film skips over important parts of Alexander life and some of the most important battles and reasons for the war were missed. It does not show that Alexander turned Macedonia from a backwater to a superpower of the ancient world. The other major problem was the story being told in a non-linear way which is confusing and pointless, the film should have been told straight like most films. It was also confusing with the large number of characters where you don't even know their names and couldn't care less for them. The casting of the film is extremely poor. Colin Farrell is a very poor actor general and unconvicting Alexander, Rosario Dawson played her role like vampire, why? Angelina Jolie is normally a good actress, but she was too glamorous for her role in a modern way and her accent was strangle, the casting director should have just casted an actress in her late 30s, early 40s from Germany or Eastern Europe. Jared Leto was underused, he hasn't got the roles he deserved after the great Requiem for a Dream. Surprising, Val Kilmer, an actor who is normally as wooden as tree, wasn't bad in this film. For a film that tries to be realist, it's a very camp bit of film-making and has some terrible dialogue, over-the-top accents and unnecessary dancing and partying.
The saving grace of the films is the very realist, brutal battles, showing how tough warfare would have been. It was well done, but they were only two battles in the film. At times they seemed like Rome: Total War the film, but there are juicy bits as well. They should have been more fighting.
Hopefully there will be a good Alexander the Great film in the future. It would also be good material for a HBO miniseries. As well, Oliver Stone needs to find his mojo again.