Overly ambitious and uneven, but worth a look

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2005)

People didn't like this movie mostly because of Alexander the Great's bisexuality. Frankly, I find it ridiculous, since in ancient Greece "bisexuality" was not only frequent, but also accepted. Moreover, there's only one actual sex scene in the movie, and a pretty laughable one at that, featuring Alexander's (Colin Farrell) tormented wedding night with his wife Roxane (Rosario Dawson). The incriminated moments, namely the Great's "affair" with childhood friend Hephaestion (Jared Leto), are very chaste, all based on looks, not even a kiss. Those scenes are a bit awkward, that's true, and you might think one such sequence would have been enough, but the "gay scenes" are actually the least significant of Alexander's many problems.
It's easy to see why Oliver Stone wanted to make this ambitious film: like most of his work, it's a story of power, paranoia and conspiracies (JFK, anyone?). This is evident from the beginning, when Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), the movie's narrator, remembers Alexander's childhood (the film's most even section, albeit too short): the young boy is constantly prepared to become king of Macedonia, by practicing horse riding and receiving a proper education from the famous Aristotle (Christopher Plummer). Nonetheless, his life is far from happy, courtesy of his parents: king Philip (Val Kilmer, a riotous but underused presence) is a drunken, foolish tyrant who will even get married three times in order to make friends with the right people; queen Olympias (a scene-stealing turn from Angelina Jolie) is a cruel, manipulative woman, frequently surrounded by snakes and eager to get her husband out of the way. In fact, when the king is murdered, she doesn't mourn him at all (and conspiracy theorists will happily feed on this).
With two individuals like those raising him, it's no wonder Alexander decided to leave his home and conquer most of the then known world, a masterful task he fulfilled before suddenly and mysteriously dying, aged 33 (the movie actually opens with that scene, played in slow motion). And it's in telling this part of the story, which occupies most of the film, that Stone exceeds in his ambitions, just like his subject did: the director feels completely at home when he's staging the massive, chaotic, gory battle sequences, but there are only two of them in a movie that's almost three hours long, and he fails to inject the same energy and enthusiasm in most of the scenes showcasing the Great's last years, when the almighty conqueror becomes a paranoid loner. It also doesn't help that Colin Farrell never fully manages to shake off his "bad boy" image (and his Irish accent), something that gives a "camp" feel to certain moments. This also occurs when Stone starts hinting at an incestuous affair between Olympias and Alexander, a suggestion that brings the mother/son scenes to the brink of the ridiculous, courtesy of excessive shouting from Farrell and too many "evil" looks from Jolie (Stephen Frears pulled off a much better job handling the same theme on The Grifters).
Still, this movie is worth watching: it may not be Stone's best, but when he really nails it, he makes you understand what a fascinating and unique man Alexander the Great was.
6,5/10