Alexander

By Todd Karella
November 24, 2004

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Movie-Pix Best Guess:

Original Story Synopsis:

An Oliver Stone film based on the life of Alexander the Great. By the age of 32 he had conquered the largest empire ever known.

Takes you from the time of his birth, through the massing of his empire and to its inevitable conclusion.

Being that it's directed by Oliver Stone, there will be a lot of liberties taken with the historical aspects of the film.

Will be similar to the recent film Troy. Filled with lots of big names and should be entertaining to watch.

Movie-Pix Hit or Miss

Best Guess Results:

As usual, Oliver Stone has taken great liberty with historical events.

Unfortunately, they do not enhance the film as it comes across as boring and pretentious.

And after three hours of watching people talk with little action, it's not worth seeing at all.

~A gay romp through history~

Once again Oliver Stone has brought controversy to one of the films he directed.
   Normally, when Stone stirs up something it usually adds to the excitement and interest of the film. In this case, it just adds to the doldrum.
   While Greek officials may be angered over the fact that Stone portrays Alexander as bi-sexual, it's the fact that it's all that he is portrayed as that completely derails the film.
   The film trudges along slowly between scenes of Alexander (Colin Farrell) flirting with his childhood boyfriend Hephaistion (Jared Leto) as the two wrestle and recite longwinded speeches about their fondness

for one another.
Whether you care about Alexander's sexuality or not, the storyline is more about his love life than his conquering of the known world. The story just moves from city to city as he conquers them where another group of pompous speeches are given.
What battles occur are more filler than anything substantial. That is of course, when there are any battles. There are really only two. One where Alexander spends most of his time trying to flank the enemy and you see people standing around during the fight, and another that's set in a forest with

quick camera shots for the only purpose of showing him come up against an elephant.
The casting appeared to be an attempt to get as many big name stars into the film as they could, then to cast by what actor could truly contribute to the story.
Colin Farrell looked rather silly with his golden locks as he pined for his childhood friend, a complete reversal of his natural persona.
His mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie) is approximately the same age as Farrell and detracts from the believability of their scenes together. To make matters worse, she has a terrible Hungarian sounding accent.

Val Kilmer plays Alexander's father Philip, a one eyed king who changes personality from scene to scene. In one scene he's a drunk disowning his son, another being his best pal and a third as completely paranoid.
His changes occur so frequently that it makes the story confusing and unnecesarily hard to follow.
While most people were expecting this film to be more like the movie Troy, which came out earlier this year and was panned by critics, Alexander makes Troy look like an academy award winner.

Rated R

Olympias-Angelina Jolie

Knight to Queen Bishop 2

It's group hug time !!!

Hephaistion-Jared Leto

Mine's bigger than yours