With all its flaws and everyone's hatred, I simply love it

Rating: 10/10 (21 February 2006)

I was impressed when I first saw Alexander on the screen. This was before I was obsessed with ancient Greek and Roman history. Then re-seeing it, I fell in love with it, original theatrical cut. The Director's cut was okay, but not better than the original.
I recently recognized the flaws which detracted some people from it, such as lack of characterization of some of the minor characters, a seeming characterization of Alexander based on his flaws rather than his greatness, and so on. However, I don't think this is enough to detract my intense love for the movie.
I think Oliver Stone is a cinematic genius, and it shows in his work like Platoon and Natural Born Killers. The direction is brilliant, and the incredible detail put into cinematography, costumes, and sets is simply epic on its own scale.
The Battle of Gaugamela sequence is pure brilliance, and I believe the most accurate ancient battle portrayal in all Hollywood. Aside from occasional lapses in which a Phalanx is broken apart, men fight in formation, rather than wandering around the field on their own, picking on-on-one "The Mummy Returns" style battles.
The acting is perhaps some of the best I've ever seen. Colin Farrel dissolves so fully into his role, that it's impossible for me to see the man playing Alexander as the man who played a slick New York agent in "Phone Booth", or a deadpan bald villain with a raspy voice in "Daredevil". Val Kilmer so fully becomes Philip of Macedon that you can't see him doing any other role. He's no longer Val Kilmer underneath the scarred eyelid and thick beard, he's Philippos II of Makedon.
The lesser-known actors, Jared Leto who plays Hephaistion, Gary Stretch who plays Cleitus the Black, and all the others playing the likes of Crateros, young Ptolemaios, Nearkhos, they are so fluid in their roles that they could quite possibly be the actual characters they portray, Irish and British accents and all.
The "Clash with Cleitus" scene is so thickly potent with chemistry between Farrel and Stretch (Cleitus) that it sends shivers through my spine listening to how these two rail at each other, and how literate, yet scathing and understandable Cleitus is. His vocabulary is like poetry, like Sophokles' writing, and yet his message is so simple and human that it's universally understood, even if you don't speak the language.
Inaccuracies aside (they had to cut and condense scenes for time, including a simplification of the Battle of Hydaspes, which Stone himself acknowledges, due to the vast complexity of the actual battle), it's one of the more accurate Hollywood movies about Ancient Greece, and an epic in its own right. Love it or hate it, it IS an epic.
The Final Cut expands upon it even more, and re-arranges scenes so that the lead-up to the Battle of Gaugamela comes first, after the scene of his death and Ptolemaios (Ptolemy)'s brief introduction. Scene re-sorting aside, new scenes show a more benevolent Alexander, working to bring Phoenicians in to build Babylon's shallow water harbor, granting gifts to his friends and soldiers, freeing Darius's harem slaves and eunuchs, granting great honors on his conquered enemies, including a scene with Oxyhartes(sp), father of Roxane. Important scenes, such as the clash with Cleitus, are expanded with more dialogue, more action before and after scenes to provide a more solid foundation for the coming events, and such, adding more depth to some, and more reasoning to others.
The Final Cut doesn't radically change the movie, but it solidifies some shaky foundations, and fixes some, but not all, of the flaws with the original cut. The subplot with Cassander and Roxane, mentioned by Stone in the original commentary, is missing, as is the conflict with Cleitus and Hephaistion.