Movie Reviews

Oliver Stone's Alexander is certainly no masterpiece, but in my opinion, it's far from being as awful as a lot of people have made it out to be.

The film spans thirty-or-so years in the life of Alexander (Colin Farrell), from his upbringing as a young prince, to his ascension to the throne, and then to the intense and blood-soaked expansion of his Macedonian empire and his rise in stature to perhaps the greatest military commander in all of history. I suppose the biggest problem with the film is the attention that it pays to smaller elements of Alexander's life -- his strange relationship with his mother, his implied homosexual tendencies, his marriage to a Persian commoner, the details of a select few individual battles -- at the expense of the 'bigger picture' -- that is, Alexander's motivations for expanding his empire so quickly and vastly. We learn a lot about the things Alexander did, but not so much about why he did them.

Still, what he did was quite impressive, and Stone's film does a good job of showing how difficult his accomplishments were. This really is a grand and epic film -- the battle scenes in particular. The acting was fine with me (not great, but more than serviceable), and the cinematography was beautiful. The music was a little cheesy and overpowering, though.

Sure, it's too long and a little disjointed, but it's also gritty, realistic, grand, and authentic. It's a lot better than Troy.