Ironically, despite advertising homosexuality this movie remains narrowminded

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2006)

Oliver Stone said that he didn't intend to do a movie for the masses. Well, at least the popular names he intended to cast (Connery, Crowe, Cruise, Neeson, Pitt) beg to differ and the presence of Hopkins certainly refutes him.
On the other hand he delivered such a confused, chaotic and slo-o-ow movie that even patient and informed viewers have hard time to follow, let alone "the masses", so he has a point, kind of.
The only good thing I can say about the piece is that it's fairest to history than any other Hollywood history product to date. Which isn't much since all other were blatant falsifications. At least they are not making stuff up (a lot). But they're omitting or casting aside crucial parts of the story. That's certainly no way to accomplish an ambitious task of bringing Alexander closer to a modern movie-goer.
The movie falls flat at its basics - the approach to the person of Alexander. Instead of presenting us qualities that made Alexander great, Stone opted for "debunking" the legend (like he tried to debunk lone-gunman theory). He went for an unoriginal, generic view on him as a frustrated, troubled tyrant. That translates to a formulaic "common man overwhelmed by events". Stone believes that Alexander's greatness is some sort of an ancient PR, or even conspiracy. He narrowmindedly misses the big picture, because despite his flaws, Alexander had to have certain "something" that made him the greatest conquerer in history. Ordinary tyrants weren't loved by the army, didn't conquer so much space in ten years and weren't welcomed and remembered as liberators in the cities they occupied as Alexander was. Almost everything he did was presented in the movie either as something he was forced into or something that just happened to him. Wrong!
Stone didn't get it, he couldn't present it and Colin Farrell certainly didn't help. But they surely trumpeted homoerotic relationships like they were such a big deal at the time. Wrong again! Good movie on Alexander is yet to be made. Maybe by that time they'll even have the guts to make actors speak in Greek.