Epic story of Alexander that comes across as mostly muddled.

Rating: Null/10 (5 September 2005)

On the one hand, I admire the effort to make one movie of the life of Alexander the Great. On the other hand, it is seemingly one conquest after another, featuring very bloody battles, and at almost 3 hours takes great effort to remain interested. I am not a student of history, more of an observer of history, and from what I can gather from a bit of 'net surfing, the story depicted here is pretty accurate. However, I believe I would have been more interested in a movie based on one very interesting part of his life, rather than all of it.
The technique used for telling the story requires various flashbacks, some 10 years earlier, some 9 years earlier, etc, which makes good viewing if you pay very close attention. However it doesn't always work.
Anthony Hopkins was my favorite as Old Ptolemy, who we see at various times telling the story. In that sense the whole movie was a flashback of his story. One of my favorite Hopkins roles was as John Quincy Adams, former president, in the movie "Amistad" (1997), where he delivers a fine, long monologue near the end on "freedom." Here in "Alexander" he delivers several good monologues.
I thought the acting was uniformly good. Colon Farrell as Alexander was young and fresh when he needed to be, and bordering on insane when he needed to be. Angelina Jolie was good as his scheming mother Olympias. Val Kilmer as his father, King Philip. Christopher Plummer as Aristotle, young Alexander's teacher.
In a time when leaders fought and captured other countries because they could, bringing wealth home to share with others, Alexander is depicted as a leader who genuinely thought it would benefit the peoples of those other lands, to be ruled by him. He also was depicted as homosexual, perhaps encouraged by his father who told him as a young boy that women cannot be trusted, only fellow men. But he married to have an heir, a son who was born only after his death. He was 33.