Not boring at all

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2004)

As expected from a 200M$ budget movie it looks absolutely clean, Hollywood style. Everything looks great and the cinematography is flawless. Now, there is a different between great cinematography and flawless since while the movie looks absolutely clean and good it had no memorial scenes and pictures. None. They showed Babylon in the most dreamy way they could and yet it felt so unreal and laughable. Looked like a stereotype. Too good which is bad. I didn't like it at all and it didn't match even abit the picture I had in my head for Babylon. And everybody knows that Actabana was the most beautiful city in the world, BTW. :D
Now the acting and the script which are tied together like siamic twins was the problem. Everything was way overacted but it seemed like the only way that the script would work. It's written in the most horrible way! The script tried to show how Alexander looked in real life but forgot to show what is known to us. And between us, who really care about his relationship with his mother, his gay relationship with his friend and his failing marriage??? I don't! I wanted to see the glorious battles and the brilliant military decisions! And what did I get? Two great battles and more then two hours of absolutely horrible showing of his personal life. And as I said everything was so overacted that I was laughing out loud in several scenes. Thank god that here in Israel the censor everything gay so the 20 minutes of the gay sex that is probably included in the movie wasn't shown. Thank you god!
But the two battles. As much as I would like to complain about how not quite realistic they were I still was absolutely thrilled of them. Both of them (in the start and the end) looked magnificent! And it's all due to the great direction of Oliver Stone. He did the best job he could with the battles and they came out absolutely different, absolutely symbolic (the rise and fall of Alexander) and absolutely thrilling. All the "personal life" and drama scenes were worth the watching because once they over you get the battles! And they alone make the movie worthy of watching.
But I won't be fooling myself. At no time I was bored! Yes, the acting and script was bad but they wasn't boring and they didn't ruin too much for me. The only thing that ruined the movie is how too many key moments weren't explained in the movie. But then again, Alexander is interesting enough, so go and grab a book!