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Alexander The Great (Colin Farrell) is a legendary warrior who uses his
personal issues as a driving force to conquer nearly the entire known world
by the time he's 25. He wants to prove to his father, King Philip (Val
Kilmer), that he will be a worthy successor to the throne and prove to
his mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie), that his dad really loves him and
would never hurt him. He starts winning battles and gets a massive hero-complex
where he thinks he's entitled to love and admiration. That may be oversimplifying
things a bit, but the long version of his motivation takes about 3 hours
to tell.
Alexander takes his Macedonian army and marches them to the ends of the world. He is unbeatable in battle, but pretty miserable the rest of the time. All he wants to do is hang out with his longtime companion/lover, Hephaistion (Jared Leto), and ignores all hints that he really needs to get a wife and establish some heirs. Then he surprises and upsets everyone by taking an Asian "barbarian" (Rosario Dawson) as his bride. Alexander refuses to listen to all requests to return to Greece and as years go by, he loses the support of nearly all his men. He dies under questionable circumstances - and that still isn't the end of the movie.
There's nothing like a Greek tragedy to stir up the emotions - only here all the scenes that should grab your attention are spoiled by overkill - the acting is too much like stage acting where everything has to be huge in order to reach the people in the last row of the balcony. It doesn't help that everybody is using their own version of what an ancient Greek accent would sound like.
When the story isn't about the psychological shaping of Alexander or a particular battle, the movie relies on the narration of a senile old man (Anthony Hopkins) - he rattles off facts and events and you just want to tune him out. It's too bad, because the stuff that they skip seems like it might have been more interesting than what they chose to show. The bloody battle sequences are done on a huge scale, but they are so over-directed most of the scope is lost. The battle in India where Alexander is wounded plays like a joke - a pink hallucination flashback (is this supposed to be what war looks like on acid?).
Speaking of flashbacks, this movie has maybe the worst placement of a flashback ever set to screen. Old man Ptolemy casually mentions in passing that King Philip is dead and the movie goes on - then out of nowhere it flashes back 8 years to show what happened to him - it's such a weird time to bring it up we thought a reel was out of place.
There's buzz about the gay love scene that was edited out and the wild love scene that was left in with Colin Farrell and Rosario Dawson (which frankly doesn't do much for her). They have a kinky idea of foreplay (lots of slapping and wielding of knives) that sparks "warrior sex", but it's certainly not worthy of the hype going on about it - at least her seduction dance is impressive.
Colin Farrell is still good-looking (even as a blonde) and his career will survive this, but this role is not going to take him to new heights. Angelina Jolie is certifiable as the snake-wearing bitter sorceress, but she smolders in this movie - the camera loves her.
© 2004 Warner Bros. Pictures - All rights reserved
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