See for scenery, Farrell, pretension, gore; avoid for script, Jolie, most else.

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2004)

Worth seeing once, on a free preview, and has some great backgrounds, costumes, and battle scenes. Problems:
[I don't think there are any spoilers in this -- no plot or anything -- but there may be. You've been warned.]

Accents, as remarked variously. Oh. Boy. (Did they lairn those accents in skewl?)

*Zero* chemistry between Farrell and Leto. Sorry to say it, but the finger points at Leto. The same inaccessible quality that made him so hot in *My So-Called Life* makes him wooden here, and in his best scenes he's only a lukewarm admirer. Farrell consistently gives more, and the result is an uneven sort-of relationship that, worse, is scripted as some grand passion.

Subpoint: The film is selling Alexander as preferring boys to girls, but, despite its men-in-skirts fetish, it spends much more sexual energy on Roxane than on either of Alexander's boys. It tiptoes past several same-sex kiss possibilities, one in particular, and reduces the same-sex affairs to a look or a come-hither gesture. In contrast, it gives us Roxane, totally, bouncingly naked, slapping Alexander in vigorous foreplay. Other scenes suggest the nature of the same-sex relationships -- the "orgy" scene and the Babylonian dancer come to mind -- but nothing connects this to Alexander. Is this a want of courage on Stone's part? Or Farrell's? Was the relationship with Leto merely what the 19th c. would have called an Ardent Friendship? What's the deal? I left the film unsure whether A. and H. were involved sexually at all.

Some battle scenes seem meant to induce seizure. The close-ups are cut fast, and the camera jets around dizzyingly. One shot shows a significant look on Alexander's face, just for a second, but I couldn't figure out what it meant. (Doesn't help that, as other reviewers have said, many characters are all but indistinguishable.) And there's gore everywhere; this is great for effect but turns some parts into really bewildering bloodbaths.

Toward the end, the film goes reeeeeeally self-indulgent -- big danger zone for this director. You think it ends, but then it begins something totally new, and though the new thing is worth exploring, one doesn't have the stamina. Stone seems so eager to make Alexander an epic figure that he avoids moments of humanity throughout -- those little smiling or stumbling moments that make a character believable. (Jolie is the worst for this, though it's the way her part's written; Kilmer helps a lot, but his Philip doesn't cohere.) The actual ending couldn't be more in love with itself if it starred Kevin Costner.

etc.
We need a new rule for directors: make a two-hour movie straight up, or make a four-hour movie with a built-in intermission. It's one thing when we're screening at home, but in a theater -- geez, directors, have a little courtesy!
MG
...und ich hab' nichts gesagt