Alexander was Great, but this movie wasn't

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2006)

Hmmm, where to start...
Let me start at the ending. Anthony Hopkins finishing monologue was enjoyable and quite moving. He's just damn good at grabbing your attention, despite everything else. The music after that (and throughout the entire movie) was not grand which one might have expected, but rather pompous and therefore just plain 'big and loud'.
Alexander's role (the older one), by Colin Farrell, was performed just about 'ok'. Some nice scenes here and there in the (long) movie, but overall, I must confess that during the battle (again, overly dramatic and pompous) where he is critically wounded, I simply couldn't care less what was going to happen to him. Not caring one bit is just about the worst thing that can happen to an audience, hence the low rating. It's not just that half scared, half surprised expression at strange moment that Colin's tries to share with you, it's the entire package of his lines, the scene cuts and several dialogues that somehow just don't seem to work very well.
Annoyances: the bloody Scottish accent (what a completely daft decision that was!), the many time shifts going back and forth several years, the music in general and some of the makeup on the wounded men that was just too much and 'arranged in an esthetically pleasing way like a bouquet of flowers' for a 'convincing picture'... not! There are some moment where you can feel the movie could have been something rather grand, epic and moving, but overall, it just seems to hobble along for 167 minutes, with a surprisingly high number of moments where you go 'wait a sec, no way...'. All in all, rather mediocre.