horrible movie

Rating: 1/10 (26 November 2004)

By golly, did this movie suck.
For one thing, I was expecting to see more of Alexander actually conquering the world. Instead, most of that is handled in narration and voiceovers. There's only two actual battles in the movie -- and while they are quite possibly some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, they can't redeem this absolute travesty of a movie.
The movie's rife with historical errors. There was never really any big dissent or conspiracy among his men. Alexander wasn't poisoned either, he fell in battle -- at least, that's how it has always been recorded. The only thing the movie really got right was the path Alexander took through Asia.
The movie is ludicrously long. It's not like LOTR, where the story and acting are just so wonderful that you don't even notice how long it is -- with this movie, practically everyone in the theater was looking at their watches, like, every ten minutes. And the plot takes so long to get moving that it never really moves. It'll inch along, and then just stop for like 30 minutes straight. The movie wasn't compelling and you felt nothing when any of the characters died.
Then there is the homosexuality issue. There is just blatant homosexuality in this film. I don't know if Oliver Stone was trying to make a message to the g@y community or what. Now, I know that men could be a lot closer to each other back then and it was considered kosher (Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, although Achilles supposedly had women as well) but this movie is full of men just randomly making out. It's totally out of place.
That's about all I've got to say. The two battles are awesome, but I wouldn't sit through the other three hours of this movie just to watch them again.
The movie gets a D-