I Really wanted to like it!

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2005)

Let me start by saying i have only seen the directors cut and no the original theatrical release. By the time i got to see the film the dust had settled from all the critics ripping the film to pieces, there attention was turned to the disappointing War of the Worlds, which is another story!
I so badly wanted to like this film as i am a fan of Stone and felt that an epic on the scale of the Alexander story could only be a good thing, unfortunately no matter how hard i tried i could not find the film at all interesting as it was extremely muddled, cutting from the present to the past and skipping bits of the story only to be filled in later! Along with this flaw is the fact that all the internal scenes look so staged that it takes all plausibility that these men were in ancient times away.
The acting in this film was dreadful (Farrell was not as bad as Clive Owen in King Arthur though) Jolie was well over the top and her accent was so out of place, where is she supposed to be from? All the characters were supposed to be Greek or Macedonian yet they were Irish! It had some great acting talent like Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer and Jared Leto in it but not even they could do anything to save this utter disappointment. The battle scenes did nothing for me as i felt no real involvement in any of the characters as they were so underdeveloped. The film as a whole feels like it had too much to say and not enough time to say it, i think 6 hours of film would not be able to fit it all in. Overall then i was extremely disappointed with a film, that i thought, could not fail. 5/10