A good movie, but tom much emphasis on the gay relations

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2004)

I liked the movie a lot. The effects were great. The filming of the fight at Gaugemala was great. Historically it seemed quite correct as well, Alexander was suspected to have a love affair with Hephaistion. This was not that odd at all in that time in Greece. A century before, the older spartan soldiers had younger (18 till 21) spartan boys assigned to them as students and lovers and the Theban Sacred Band were gay elite soldiers. Herodotus even writes that greeks introduced the Persians to the pleasures of male to male sex.
However, the movie is emphasizing this aspect too much and is projecting Alexander as a gay who is on the lookout for beautiful boys all the time. This half an hour of movie wasted on this, should have been used to tell some more about the time before Gaugemala. The battle of the Issus is completely left out.
The accent Angelina Jolie puts on is ridiculous. Are all evil people speaking with Russian or German accents ? Even in ancient history ? Besides these remarks I find the movie very entertaining and historically reasonably correct.