Not Great at All

Rating: 1/10 (5 August 2005)

Whee-oo! A genuine stinker! It's amazing that a major director with a vast budget and mostly great actors can make such a terrible movie. It's almost as amazing that some reviewers liked this film! Takes all kinds, I guess; that's what makes the world go round. Oliver Stone misses the boat entirely in depicting a great man. Instead, he gives us an unimposing, doe-eyed, teary, sexually-confused and preoccupied wimp (maybe some viewers relate to this in our world today) in the form of Colllin Farrell. Aside from my opinion that Farrell is badly miscast, it is just unbelievable that this character could conquer anything, much less the world! The film is way too talky, spends way too much time on Alexander's emotional and sexual soul-searching  which all comes off as an indulgent waste of time in a bloated film that cries out for major editing. The plot wanders, the viewer is subjected to LONG stretches of dialog that go nowhere, and one is left shaking their head and mumbling, "THIS was Alexander?" Stone got lost back in there somewhere, and forgot that however flawed, any man as great as Alexander had to have been epic in some fashion. This movie never gets there. And get a good helmet! This film is a bleary, indulgent, neurotic waste of resources.