The four problems that make Alexander good rather than great

Rating: 8/10 (4 December 2004)

1. I hate to put this first, but the music was terrible. Distracting and detracting. It was worse than the music in Troy.
2. The movie was marketed incorrectly. The trailers depict this movie as being about a heterosexual waging all kinds of awesome, gruesome bloody warfare of "epic" proportions. This movie is actually about Alexander, and while glaringly inaccurate at times, does show more about the man himself and acknowledges that "gay," straight," and "homo/hetero-sexual" have no meaning in Alexander's world.
3. The movie expects, or at least *requires,* you to know more about AtG other than the fact that he existed. While the big picture is easy to follow, people who don't know a lot about the man get lost in the details and the disjointed editing. These two things to people who have studied/researched AtG are not problems and in fact make the movie quite enjoyable.
4. Miscasting. While I could write a whole dissertation about how the cast does not match up very well with their characters, I'll leave that to each his own. I would have cast virtually everyone different, with the notable exceptions of Gary Stretch as Cleitus and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Cassander.
Though I might have made Rhys-Meyers Hephaistion instead.