How did so many talents with such a story produce such banality?

Rating: 1/10 (8 August 2005)

It took me two nights (2½ hours total) to watch this - as I couldn't stay awake the first night. The story of Alexander is fascinating, but you wouldn't know it from watching this movie. (Michael Wood's excellent TV series/DVD/book "In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great" is a much better use of your time, and much more engaging.)
The Irish accents are invasive, and in the case of some (e.g. Val Kilmer) truly risible. (And the Russian accents? Come on!) Colin Farrell is utterly implausible - I wouldn't follow him to the bottom of my garden, and that's not very far. My wife thinks he looked like a porn star. (It would have been a very low budget porn film to use such poor wigs...)
The film's historical accuracy is better than Stone's version of the Kennedy story, but it completely misses in its attempt to capture the true sense of scale and ambition in Alexander's quests. It similarly fails to adequately address the source of that ambition.
In summary, this film utilises the talents of a dozen or so stars (and Colin Farrell), millions of dollars of very obvious production costs and is based on one of the most epic stories of individual ambition in the history of the world. And the result? An overlong, indulgent, "who cares?" movie.
What a waste! Brian