rating:
(out of
4 stars)Germany, United States, The Netherlands, France; 2004
Directed by Oliver Stone; produced by Moritz Borman, Jon Kilik, Thomas Schühly, Iain Smith, Oliver Stone; written by Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle, Laeta Kalogridis
Starring Colin Farrell, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Christopher Plummer, Jared Leto, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Rosario Dawson
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
'Alexander' is the kind of film you hear about over a year before its
release and you really want to see it, only to be disappointed when you
finally have. I had the same feeling with both 'Matrix'-sequels. There is so
much wrong with this film that when something good comes along you can
hardly enjoy it. It starts with the casting. Colin Farrell plays Alexander
(the Great that is) and although he does the best he can he could not
convince me once. I like him in most of his films but here I really wanted
to see someone else the entire time. Then his parents are played by Val
Kilmer and Angelina Jolie, a second mistake. Kilmer is not that bad, but the
scenes between a grown Alexander and his mother named Olympias feels simply
weird. And why is Jolie talking with that weird accent? It is not that the
Macedonian people were talking English anyway.
A second flaw is the strange narration. The film is told by Ptolemy (Anthony
Hopkins), years after the events we see. It seems that director Oliver Stone
gives us the visuals from some of Ptolemy's words, close to random scenes he
thinks are interesting, and in between we have those words to guide us to
the next event on screen. We start with Alexander as a boy, we learn about
the relationship he has with his father and his mother, we do not see how he
becomes king, we do see again how he conquers a lot of Asia, and then
suddenly we have a flashback to see how he did become king. Why in that
order? I was not able to figure it out. Around that point in the film
Alexander has reached India where we have some impressive sequences but I
really did not care anymore.
What do we learn about Alexander in this film? He likes the hug his closest
friend Hephaistion (Jared Leto) a lot and although the film wants to say
something about his sexuality it really never does. He marries an Asian girl
named Roxane (Rosario Dawson), which upsets a lot of people, but he has this
romantic scenes with Hephaistion, always ending with a hug, nothing more. I
was even wondering whether Alexander was a hero or just a selfish man who
was lucky enough to have a great deal of power to achieve his goals. The
film was wondering too, at times at least.
The length of the film is another problem. A good film could go on for hours
without being bored, here I wanted to end it after fifteen minutes. I am
glad I did not since the best scenes, I mean very good here, are near the
end, set in India. Alexander and his army on horses, the people from India
on elephants. One moment in particular, played in slow-motion, belongs to
the scenes I will remember from this film. That I did not care anymore about
what happened around that scene could not prevent me from liking it. The
battles could make this film good enough for some, I guess. Besides the
battles there are some other qualities. Both the cinematography from Rodrigo
Prieto and the score from Vangelis have impressive moments. Oliver Stone has
made good and great films including 'Platoon' and 'JFK', but sometimes his
best efforts and intentions are not good enough. 'Alexander' is the best
example.