Missed chance

Rating: 1/10 (5 August 2005)

I rented this movie on DVD yesterday and, to be honest, i really don't understand why there are so many positive comments in the reviews. I found it badly acted (Colin Farell, Angelina Jolie), badly casted (again Colin Farell is terrible as Alexander), badly filmed (with horrible sceneries) and way too long with too many bad conversations.
It doesn't happen very often that i walk out on a movie but on this one i almost did. I am an archaeologist myself and i can't understand why the historian Robin Lane Fox agreed to this scenario, i guess it must be because of the small cameo he was given. The amount of crying that Alexander does in this movie is astonishing, and the homo-erotic emphasis is over-exaggerated (and i really don't have a problem with homosexuals). If you are expecting a movie about the great leadership of Alexander the Great and his unique achievements on the battlefields don't go see this one. He is presented here as a weak, whining and insecure softy and that's really not a correct way of presenting the facts. I can understand now why the Greeks were not amused by this movie.
All the pretentious name throwing in the movie and selective presenting of facts is useless because 99% of the audience can't relate to it. They just come to see a good action movie. And if you want to know all the details go and read Plutarchus on Alexander. Without it, the movie could have had more action and speed and it could have been a lot shorter in length. Now I felt like a guest at a dinner table with too much bad food and too much bad company and no way to get out.
My advice to Oliver Stone is to go and take some lessons from Ridley Scott on how to make these kind of movies. Both Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven are very nicely done and very enjoyable. Stone was always high in my book because of movies like Platoon and Natural Born Killers but in this case the money could have been spent in a much better way.
I really think this is a missed chance, it could have been a great movie with the right director, scenario and actors. It has replaced Troy at the bottom of my list and i never thought that it could be possible to make a worse antiquity movie than that. It gets a 1 from me, and i would like to propose that the horse that played Bucephalus gets the award for best acting in this movie for lack of acceptable human performances.