Tragic

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2006)

The critic and film historian Robert Sarris said of Robert Rossen's 1956 epic 'Alexander the Great', featuring Richard Burton as our titular hero, that it "aimed for greatness and lost honourably". Oliver Stone's current offering to the Dionysian gods of cinematic excess, 'Alexander', has much in common with it's predecessor but, sadly, honour isn't one of them.
Like the earlier film and, for that matter, every film Stone has ever made, it's  at knocking on three hours  seriously in need of a good editor. It has an all-star cast, mostly drawn - in the great Hollywood tradition of the Classical world being populated by British character actors  from current Equity rosters (the likes of Olivier, Barry Jones and Michael Hordern are replaced by rather more low-rent personages as Tim Piggot-Smith, Brian Blessed and that big fella from the Scots Porridge Oats advert). Also, like the original movie it features a dark and hairy Celtic-type who can't do accents as the blond, blue-eyed Hellenic hero. With Burton  a man with natural presence and authority  this latter incongruity is more easily overlooked than is the case with Colin Farrell, who has the general demeanour of a bleached and strategically shaved Gremlin. Hairy Col's verbal limitations have also, it seems, led Stone to populate Macedonia with Irishmen  with a token Welshman and Scotsman thrown in for good measure (Greeks are all Englishmen, by the way). This means that Val Kilmer, as Alexander's dear old dad, Philip, has to adopt a brogue almost as astonishingly unconvincing as his wig, and that unintentional titters abound in the auditoria as hairy Hibernian's slap each other manfully on the back proclaiming such classic lines as "In t' name o' Zeus, Alexander, d'ye t'ink I'm a daft auld sod?" Foreigners are granted a variety of curious accents. Angelina Jolie sounds Russian and Athena alone knows where in Hades Rosario Dawson is supposed to come from.
This coming from Laughin' Ollie Stone it's a poker-faced presentation, offering conspiracies a-plenty. I wouldn't have been surprised if there had been talk of a Lone Swordsman on a grassy Grecian knoll when Philip was offed. The main difference between this film and the 1956 offering comes in its treatment of Alexander's homosexuality. Nary a mention was made of Big Gay Al's rather more than Platonic relationships in Rossen's film. Here, it's evident, but is the object of knowing disdainful frowns from his contemporaries  which shows a pitiful understanding, on the part of Stone, of Hellenic sexual politics. Here it's clearly presented as a character flaw, showing nothing more clearly than the director's cowardice in addressing the issue: in a film notable for it's visceral excess, and which requires nudity from Rosario Dawson in a near-rape scene, Stone limit's Alexander's 'unnatural' appetites to precisely three hugs and two pecks on the lips.
The film is a muddled hotch-potch of incidents from Alexander's life. This would be less of a muddle, admittedly, if a fifteen minute flashback two-thirds of the way through the film was presented as part of the otherwise straightforward linear narrative. There are a few parallels between the life-choices and characters of Alexander and Philip, but these appear almost to have been afterthoughts. The greatest impediments, though, are that - despite it's great length - characters are not permitted to evolve beyond one-note caricatures (though Kilmer, an actor I have little time for, normally, tries harder than most with what little screen time he has), and that Farrell has no authority whatever on screen.
Thus, sorry though I am to have to say it, I am forced to confirm the critical evaluation of 'Alexander' offered by the Chavs whose departure from the cinema preceded my own. One succinctly noted "That was rotten." "Aye," said the other, referring to the pulchritudinous Ms Dawson, "But that coloured bird is kinda fit!" Indeed she is, boys. Indeed she is.