no plot, no vision, no movie

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2004)

Seriously, it is not so that oliver stone hasn't made movies worth watching. I mean they never were excellent or anything close to avantgarde (JFK or the people vs. Larry Flint were not bad), but this one is definitely out of any range. At first, there is no plot, no story to be told, no aim, no problem to solve; all there is, is the life of Alexander. Hey, we're in the movies not on some documentary channel. Worst of all, half the hard path (more so for the viewer than for Alexander) already behind, we are all of sudden forced back some eight years to watch alexanders father die. No clue to why at this point, no connection to rest of the plot. So after a twenty minute brake ("o gosh we forget the scene of his fathers assassination! lets put about here; might fit?") we return to no plot. But who cares; no plot is no plot, anyway. Second: Please spare us those cheaply made red-blood scenes. Horrible, simply annoying. Who has seen "the emperor and his assassin" knows what one can achieve with colors. But it appears oliver stone didn't see this movie. All he does after Alexander is hit by an arrow is to take out all colors out of the picture except for green. I mean, please, we are not stupid. And it looks garbage. Thirdly: Historic facts don't match. 1. all of sudden all people conquered are fully capable of speaking Greek (douglas adams has already been there). 2. no Greek could count farther then 999; the Greek number system simply doesn't allow it. 3. no Greek was capable of reading quietly at that time. everything was read out aloud. Finally: "Those who pursue their dreams are going to be the ones to remember." What kind of cheap rubbish philosophy is that? Do we really have be punished this hard? And thats the main message of the film. As if this really counts. This is what destroys our society: overemphasized individualism. We don't look for our next and their problems. Only to be famous, to be remembered. What for? The one interesting point about this movie is realizing that old ptolemy indeed is anthony hopkins, even though I had a hard time recognizing him. All in all I honestly was bored, unchallenged and shocked by so little creativity as to how to make a movie work. a.t.