Ouch

Rating: 3/10 (4 January 2005)

I don't care if some of the accents were off. I don't care if Jolie may have been too young for her role. I don't even care whether or not Stone is 100% faithful to history. But you must hold my interest. Even a terrible Ed Wood type movie can be interesting in its badness. But Alexander is not even memorable in that category. And, no, homosexuality does not bother me. Sorry to disappoint you- I realize that screeching about people's prejudices can sometimes be a nice way to indirectly pat yourself on the back. But I'm afraid you won't have that opportunity, here.
Cheesy dialogue. The "controversial" sexuality basically consisted of Leto and Farrell surreptitiously glancing at one another. The sexuality was not explored at all. Overblown battle scenes which drag on forever. The battles feel like you're just watching hundreds of random people riding horses and slashing at one another, with no great sense of who's winning or what progress is being made. To me the fight scenes are no more elevated than a big budget American Gladiators, with a hokey bird flying overhead. Battle. Rousing speech to build troops' morale. Battle. Wash, rinse, repeat cycle. Haven't we seen this stuff before? The scenes felt stapled together. Reading a Cliffs Notes synopsis of Alexander's story would have given me more emotional impact than this movie.
Now and then characters manage to spit out something mildly interesting. Alexander at one point angrily and humbly asks about the conquered people "And what makes us better than them?". Another reviewer here seemed impressed that Alexander at one point asks "am I divine, or weak?". Hmmm.Hardly profound. On second thought maybe there wasn't any good dialogue. I can appreciate that a lot of time and money and hard work was put into this movie, but it just didn't do it for me. If you want a decent Oliver Stone movie, I think you should check out Talk Radio instead.
And I've noticed a few pompous folks from other countries snorting that Alexander is too smart for Americans. I'll be the first to agree that most American movies are terrible. But when taking a multiple choice test, even a fool will sometimes pick the right answer. And I think that's just what the American public did in this case. This movie will NOT be remembered.