An excellent film that has been torn to pieces

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2007)

"Alexander" is not perfect. Maybe it could have been. But it remains the best work Oliver Stone, Colin Farrell, and (especially) Angelina Jolie and Val Kilmer have done to date. People have virtually crucified this movie, mainly because Stone had the guts to show that the title character was bisexual. But try to flesh that out in a movie, and suddenly you become a bad person because modern audiences still can't handle it. I was glad to find out that that aspect of his life was not cut out, as the people who made "Troy" refused to acknowledge Achilles' homosexuality. Some moments are over-the-top, especially in the father-son relationship between Kilmer and Farrell, but the battle scenes are much better than anything in "Troy" or "Kingdom of Heaven," and it is awfully fun to listen to the accents done by Jolie and Rosario Dawson (who gets the delicious line, "*You* love *heem*?!") As Peter O'Toole said in "My Favorite Year" (1982), "Bravo, Stone, bravo."