Reasonably entertaining

Rating: 6/10 (8 August 2005)

Some of the harsh reviews of this movie may be due to high expectations. Oliver Stone clearly put a lot of effort into this movie; this shows primarily in the production design, set decoration, and photography. This is one great-looking film.
Of course there are plenty of great-looking films that are dull and tedious, or simply fall short of a genuinely absorbing story. Alexander is balanced perilously on the edge between a stiff, uninvolved plot and a rousing epic. There's some of both.
Colin Farrell doesn't seem the right choice for a dynamic leader of men. I can't criticize his performance so much as the script, which calls for him to either scream, cry, or speechify in almost every scene. He isn't awful; but he doesn't project the charisma you'd expect from a leader of a vast army.
Angelina Jolie's performance has been much criticized, but I found her one of the more appealing things about the film. The bit with the snakes is strange, but her character is three-dimensional; in fact her screen presence is somewhat stronger than Farrell's.
Scene after scene goes on forever, with the actors chewing scenery like there's no tomorrow as swelling music hammers the point home. Fortunately, there's lots of gorgeous scenery to chew, especially if you watch this film in high-def.
The movie gets off to a slow start, but picks up in the second hour and becomes genuinely engrossing thereafter. I might have found it hard to sit through all three hours in a theater, but for home viewing it's decent entertainment.
It's certainly no worse than "Troy" or "Gladiator", two wildly over-praised films which I *did* sit through in a theater. As an older man, I'm perhaps too influenced by memories of the old-fashioned epics like "Spartacus" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire." These older films have their flaws also --- cheesy dialogue and some wooden performances --- but there's great pulp fiction storytelling, and that's what makes them so entertaining. "Troy" and "Gladiator" are a bit too pretentious for my taste, and while "Alexander" certainly suffers from the same problems, it's at least as enjoyable.
Bottom line: this is a much better film than the early 50s "Alexander the Great", starring Richard Burton as Alexander. I sat through the DVD of that movie last fall and it's ultra-boring. Dull from start to finish. Oliver Stone's picture falls far short of the mark, but at least it's entertaining.