Too much talk, little cohesion...

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2004)

Talk, talk, talk... is this an action film or a documentary? There was so much being said, too many people talking without doing, and discussing things the audience is guaranteed to have no clue about. The action that actually happened was disjointed - if you're expecting an epic you'll be disappointed. It's not much more than a collection of adventures in one man's life, certainly not an epic tale of a hero uniting the known world. They didn't show a lot of story in the movie, but instead had gaps between major battles or campaigns filled in with an old man reminiscing about how great Alexander was.
The action that did come often left me completely lost, or completely disgusted. Major overuse of blood and gore. It jumped back and forth a lot, often with no seeming purpose. He would go here, go there, go everywhere, and you would have no idea how he got there or why anyone was reacting the way they did. Three hours is not too long for a movie, but it's too long when the scenes are being wasted on talk completely unrelated to the rest of the movie, or long drawn-out scenes stretching a few seconds of action into ten minutes of people walking around trying to be meaningful to pompous music.
The one thing I liked was that it did a fantastic job of portraying a very human Alexander, beset by very human concerns, and making him very easy to relate to. There weren't any glaring historical errors that I noticed. You couldn't help but like him, even if he did have some ridiculous statements and do the most ridiculous things. Despite trying to conquer and kill everyone, he still managed to convince himself, and almost convince the viewer, that his was a noble quest to free and unite all the peoples. But overall, in terms of outstanding performances, Angelina Jolie stole the movie for me. I was a lot more attracted to her than any of the males in the movie (I'm female). Her performance was superb and definitely held up an otherwise shaky movie.
I have no intention of seeing this again (I saw it for free a week before it comes out), and wouldn't recommend spending eight bucks on this movie, but it's worth renting when it comes out on DVD.