| Cast |
Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Rosario Dawson, Jared Leto |
| Director |
Oliver Stone |
| Screenplay | Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle, Laeta Kalogridis |
| Music | Vangelis |
| Cinematography | Rodrigo Prieto |
| Sound formats | Dolby Digital, Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, DTS |
| Made in | 2004 |
| Produced by | Warner Bros., Intermedia Films, Pacifica Film, IMF |
| Scale (Max) | 20 |  |
What the Critics say | ||
| The Moviesite Ian Douglas | 10 |  |
| Cape Argus Derek Wilson | 5 |  |
| Die Burger Marenet Jordaan | 5 | |
| Sunday Times Barry Ronge | 10 | |
| eye Weekly Jason Anderson | 3 | |
| Box Office Annlee Ellingson | 10 | |
| ReelViews James Berardinelli | 10 | |
| Chicago Sunday Times Roger Ebert | 10 | |
What the People say | ||
| Internet 3060 Netizens | 11 |  |
Average .. 41% | 8 | |
As to the movie itself, well, on the positive side, the production values were excellent, as were the fake settings like Babylon. The war scenes were very realistic and generally well staged, though I found the action during them very confusing. Now, on the downside... the storyline is a mix of ''character study'' and ''road trip'', neither of which are particular favourites of mine. The movie is also incredibly talky, to the point where you wish they would shut up and get on with the story. Much of what Alexander did is glossed over in summary, leaving us instead with multiple scenes of Alex having intimate conversations with his mother and male lover. These fall into the ''character study'' part and are mostly boring. The numerous battles — around 40 or so — are skipped over, we only get to see two decisive ones. This leaves us with war and talking, mainly, which does not really make for an engrossing movie.
Some critics have lambasted Farrel's performance, but I thought all the male leads did okay, even if Kilmer was almost over the top much of the time. The female leads, however, fared poorly. Both were made up to look uglier than they naturally are, and had to talk in ridiculous accents, bringing their roles to the point of ridicule. I have no idea what Stone thought he was doing here.
The movie *is* long, and since it's a road trip (Alex travels from Macedonia to India), there's not really much point apart from the scenery. The script writers throw in commentary trying to understand some of Alex's decisions like why he married the women he did, but fail to find the reason, which was obvious for me to see — Alex wanted to unite West and East, and wanted an heir to rule both, who was *of* both — hence the need for Asian wives, which his fellow travellers (and modern historians, it seems) could not grasp.
So where does that leave us? The movie educated me, assuming that it is historically accurate. But is it a good *movie*? No,
it is average on that score. Vangelis did his usual good work on the score, though, and the sweeping cinematography is great.