Had potential which was unfortunately squandered

Rating: 4/10 (4 July 2010)

I was quite disappointed when I saw this movie, and wouldn't bother recommending it to anyone else. What was most unfortunate was that there were some really great ideas, and obviously whoever wrote it had a great knowledge of Ancient Greek history and myth.
For instance; Alexander's seemingly out of place blond curly hair is meant to imply divinity, and the bulls outside Darius' palace are actually replicas. Alexander, who was a lover of mythology and literature, was cleverly compared to Achilles (the way he mourns for his friend is much like the way Achilles mourned Patroclus), Heracles (Alexander wears a lions skin), Oedipus (his relationship with his mother), and Prometheus (the eagle he sees descending on him). This movie is also almost entirely historically accurate, and there is very little placing of modern values onto ancient characters, which is nice to see. To see Alexander the great compared to the heroes of his legends was incredible, as he has now become legend to us. Obviously someone involved in the process of making the movie had a payed attention to detail, though unfortunately this was almost overshadowed by some major mistakes.
The characters in the film were not only miscast, but basically none of them were Greek, and there was barely an attempt to pick actors who looked vaguely Greek. The use of Irish accents was also confusing, at least the director could have picked a more neutral southern English accent so that we could at least pretend they were Greek; it was definitely difficult to get over their "Irishness." The music was also just awful. Entire scenes were ruined by the fact that overly romantic, cheesy music was played, even complete silence would have been better. If a composer was hired to write music, and it turned out to be that terrible and not fitted to anything that was going on in the movie, then it should just be scrapped.
This movie was not filmed well, often camera angles and changes were not well chosen and scenes were pieced together in such a way that the movie seemed sloppy and not polished. The story of the madness and near impossibility of what he did was not truly shown, so when he is called "Alexander the great" people who do not already know the story would wonder why.
This movie took a legendary character and story, presented some great ideas which were true to Ancient Greek ideals, and somewhere in the process managed to turn it into something as mediocre as this film. Disappointing.