"Alexander”
Warner Brother Pictures
Directed by Oliver Stone
Starring Colin Farrell, Jared Leto, Angelina Joile, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins and Rosario Dawson
Rated R

1 1/2 Stars

At one time there were three movies about Alexander the Great in the works. Oliver Stone finished his labor of love first, forcing Baz Luhrmann and HBO to scrap their projects, thinking that there was too much money at stake to risk audience fatigue on dueling “Alexander” movies.

It turns out that audiences will have a hard enough time sitting through just one tale of the young conqueror’s life. Running just shy of three hours, Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” is a talky, melodramatic pseudo-epic that features a few memorable set pieces, but will mostly be remembered for it’s bad acting, atrocious dialogue and some truly misconceived directorial decisions.

Why does Alexander (Colin Farrell) speak with an Irish accent? Why does his mother (Angelina Joile) sound like she’s in a Transylvanian soap opera? And while were at it, does anybody really buy the idea that 29-year-old Angelina Joile could be mother to 28-year-old Collin Farrell? And don’t get me started on Jared Leto’s Cleopatra-inspired eye liner and the truly laughable wigs that Farrell is forced to wear. He’s busy trying to conquer the world and survive his parents and I couldn’t stop thinking about the blond monstrosity perched awkwardly on his sorry head.

It’s not all bad; some of the battle scenes do work. I particularly enjoyed the horse versus war elephant sequence that is featured so prominently in the trailer. And while the movie is over-long, it’s never really boring in the way that many historical epics tend to be.

Still, “Alexander” is a major disappointment. Farrell plays the world ruler as a misty-eyed momma’s boy who just wants to be loved. The one person who loves him without agenda is Hephaistion (Jared Leto), but homosexual love stories are box office poison, so their relationship is handled with a lot of hugging, lingering glances and innuendo. Rosario Dawson comes into the picture to put the heterosexual crowd at ease, but her animalistic wedding night antics left the audience giggling at the spectacle.

I blame Oliver Stone. He’s generally a very solid director, but somehow this 150 million-dollar movie got away from him. He didn’t get the screenplay to work, he didn’t get credible performances by his actors and he accepted an amazingly cheesy musical score from Vangelis.

At one point Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) says “All men reach and fall.” He’s referring to Alexander, but it also holds true for director Oliver Stone.


Movie reviews by Sean McBride, “The Movie Guy,” are published Wednesdays and Fridays in the Port Arthur News. Sean the Movie guy appears Fridays on KFDM-TV, Channel 6 and Monday and Thursday evenings on KWBB-TV, News at Nine. For more reviews, check out www.seanthemovieguy.com. Direct all comments to seanmc@kfdm.com.