Alexander (2004)

Genre

Adventure| Biography | Drama | History

Director

Oliver Stone

Country

Germany | USA | Netherlands | France | UK | Italy

Cast

Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gary Stretch, Joseph Morgan, Raz Degan, Neil Jackson, Francisco Bosch, Denis Conway, John Kavanaugh, Nick Dunning, Rory McCann, Ian Beattie, Annelise Hesme, Garrett Earley

Storyline

The story of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell), the King of Macedonia and one of the greatest military leaders in the history of warfare that conquers much of the known world.

Opinion

None of the history teachers I had made Alexander the Great interesting so I really never cared about him. I thought an Oliver Stone movie starring Colin Farrell could have made a difference. Boy, if I was wrong.

"Alexander" is a rather slow and at times tedious and soporific film that is far away from being great.

Even though Alexander the Great has never been one of my favourite historical figures, studying him over and over again produced some results. For instance, I know what a complex figure he was. The tactical genius and indomitable character I was expecting to see isn't in the film. Instead we get an Irish boy with bleached hair.

Other than failing to properly portray both the greatness of such a character and the greatness of his exploits, Oliver Stone decided to focus on the homosexual relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but Stone should have approached to it differently. The values in Alexander's day were different from the values of our day, and the homosexual relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion would have not been the same today. He decided to portray both men like two girls - apparently that's how a man that does have sex with another man acts like -, but this is no sitcom, Mr. Stone.

The film doesn't even have a proper narrative structure. It keeps on flashing back to the past throughout the whole thing, and the plot is so incoherent it needs Anthony Hopkins's constant narration to make sense. Also, there's the embarrassing dialogue.

The cast doesn't make it better. Colin Farrell is awful in here, and plays Alexander as a weak and emotionally distraught man whose facial expressions are painful to watch. Angelina Jolie plays Alexander's mother and for some weird reason she has a Russian kind of accent. The out of place accents are all over the place and very distracting - I mean, Greeks having Irish accents? Can't you do better than that? -, and the acting is over the top.