Oliver Stone's Alexander

Rating: 7/10 (13 June 2005)

Given 5 hours I'm sure the Master would have vanquished complaints of time warp, blessed us with fewer monologues and more comprehensive character development. However, Alexander is what it is -- and somewhat less than it could have been. To convey the enormous reach of young Alexander's conquests, their impact on the conquered as well as the conquering, Stone uses monologue narration via Anthony Hopkins (Ptolemy) as he used him in NIXON, and Costner in JFK -- to array the facts, and ask the key questions. No one can create these larger than life portraits and still serve the facts and the gaps better than Oliver Stone. However, if one can't accept how Stone does his work, then they may as well pick another flick. But, if one enjoys feasting on spectacle, Stone's rendition of the battle at Gaugamela is astonishing, with his aerial shots, swish pans, stuttering cuts of an army of individuals, with the eerie guttural sounds of who-knows-what that make the gut turn and the skin crawl. All this said, even though Stone says that Colin Farrell "became Alexander," he perhaps was too fine a rendition of the bi-sexual conqueror. He voice wasn't low enough. He wasn't muscled enough. His face wasn't fierce enough. And of course that's the point. But I needed to see a young Russell Crowe conquering the world on Bucephalus. Finally, Irish accents and Jolie's ludicrous lilt designed to clarify the distinction between Greeks and Macedonians wasn't worth the distraction.