What went wrong?

Rating: 4/10 (11 May 2006)

I was as pumped to see this movie as anyone when this came out, in spite of the negative reviews. I was thinking it would be a movie like WINDTALKERS, which got totally slammed, but was a fun retread nonetheless if not taken seriously. When I finally got to see it, I found out, yeah... it is a huge mess, and uninteresting as the main actors - Farrell and Jolie, are absolutely dull and out of place. They're akin to casting DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz in GANGS OF NEW YORK. These young hipster actors just don't work in historical epics. Maybe Billy Zane or Christian Bale would work... but no more Orlando Blooms. Who can take these seriously? In 50 years when people look back on this, how is a young Colin Farrell going to stack up against a young Marlon Brando or Richard Burton? Will anyone even remember Farrell? There are diamonds in the rough to be had though... Vangelis's music is among his best in recent years, grand and orchestral tough retaining a little of his trademark soaring synthesizers. It works very well in a period piece. Brian Blessed and Christopher Plummer have welcome (if too brief) cameos... and the scene where Alexander attacks the elephant with his horse (though overblown) works fairly well.
The rest of the movie is (to put it in English) utter pap. Stone did such great work with JFK, PLATOON, and arguably NATURAL BORN KILLERS... what happens when you stick him with a lot of great genre actors and Vangelis? How did this go wrong? Oh yeah, Farrell and Jolie... not to mention a mishandled story from page 1. At least they never made the Alexander movie Baz Luhrman was planning for so long to star Leonardo DiCaprio... THAT would have likely been even worse.