My god, Oliver stone, what were you thinking!

Rating: 1/10 (21 October 2007)

I'm watching this film on TV right now, and it's so bad that i felt compelled to look up the review on IMDb rather than continue to be tortured by this awful awful production.
Firstly, Why do so many people give this 8-10 stars? I am seriously confused. Do you people like long winded pointless diamonologue? Do you guys watch movies to be bored to tears? Why does everyone have an Irish accent???? (except for Angelina Jolie who performs the token European twang) I know there are some Irish actors in there (Mick Lally, Milie from "Glenroe" take a bow) but I'm pretty certain that Val Kilmer doesn't hail from south county Dublin.
The battle scenes are amongst the worst I have ever seen. They make no sense. There are scenes where the cavalry are charging relentlessly towards the enemy (in the distance) but in the close up shots there are infantry keeping pace with the horses on foot. How fast can these Macedonians run? When the armies eventually meet each other it is almost impossible to figure out who is fighting who, which side is winning, or even follow individual soldiers through battle. After the first big mêlée I, and everyone else in the room were confused about who actually won the fight, and we certainly didn't know how exactly Alexander managed to defeat an army more than 6 times as strong as his.
How can any film have so much talking with such a bland story? Oliver Stone's direction is to blame here. Every single scene is over directed and over acted. There is no light relief to be found anywhere in this 3 hour long film. Its just overly serious scene after overly serious scene.
The only slightly humorous scene in the whole film is where they encounter the monkeys, and that is a sideshow less than 30 seconds long, and barely raises a smirk.
If it wasn't for the narrator, the story would make absolutely no sense. It gets so bad that all of the story is told by the narrator. The bits when the actors do any speaking are just filling in the exaggerated and unrealistic emotion (always sombre and overblown)