Alexander the Not So Great

Rating: 1/10 (13 July 2006)

This is probably one of the worst movies I had to submit my eyes to watching. Oliver Stone's Alexander is supposedly a biographical film detailing the life of one history's most influential figures. Everything that made Alexander the Great "Great" was left out of this movie. Instead, the film "Alexander" focuses on Alexander's bisexuality and people telling Alexander how great he really is.
This is one of those movies that's so bad on so many levels, that it would probably be easier to list the good qualities since it would take up less space. The only halfway decent quality of Alexander is the set design and costumes.
Where should I begin on what's wrong with this movie? I'll start with casting. Colin Farrell is by far (in my opinion) the worst person to play Alexander the Great. First off, Colin Farrell is Irish, he doesn't look Greek, and when you look at him on screen, you know its Colin Farrell. They gave Colin a blonde dye job for his hair. They forgot about his five o'clock shadow and eyebrows. Oh well.
Angelina Jolie plays Alexander's mother. She's from Macedonia yet has a Russian sounding accent, a poor one at that. Also, Angelina Jolie is only 1 year older than Colin Farrell.
A major flaw in Alexander is the editing. Nothing is in chronological order. The movie begins with Alexander's childhood, then jumps all around in no sequential order. Throughout the entire film, the characters talk about Alexander's father's murder. But the actual murder scene isn't shown until the last 10 minutes of the movie. The only 2 battle scenes in this movie were poorly shot. They're blurry and its hard to see who's fighting who. For some reason in the second battle scene, Alexander gets injured and everything starts to turning into a neon red color. The movie goes from being a historical film, to a drug film like The Wall or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. During the first battle scene, Oliver Stone decided to put subtitles up to let the audience know which "flank" we were looking at. So automatically, that kills the feel of the movie, reminding the audience, "you are watching a movie" instead of giving the feel that you're in an ancient time period.
The dialogue is atrocious in Alexander. Not only is this movie 90% talking, its not even interesting. Literally in every scene, someone mentions or tells to Alexander's face how "great" he is. To make it even worse, the bad acting sometimes made the dialogue laughable. Colin Farrell and Jared Leto must say at least 6 times in this movie that if one of them dies, the other one will kill them self. "If you die Alexander, I'll die with you." My main problem with Alexander is that this movie is about a man who conquered over 100 regions in a matter of 10 years, yet, this movie shows only 2 poorly filmed battle scenes. Given, it would be impossible to show every battle that Alexander was in. Instead, Anthony Hopkins as the Narrator, drones on about all the victories Alexander achieved. The rest of the movie is mostly Alexander sitting in different palace courts hugging Jared Leto a little too affectionately, drinking wine, and making out with male dancers. I realize the whole gay thing is popular with cinema right now, but Alexander the Great's sexual preferences had nothing to do with what he accomplished: Bringing the western world together with the eastern world.
Don't waste your time watching this piece of garbage. Watch the History Channel Documentary on Alexander the Great instead. Its about two hours shorter, and you'll learn a lot more than this supposed "Historical Biography."