"Alexander" the Great Disappointment

Oliver Stone’s epic biography Alexander is the year’s most disappointing movie. Disjointed, slow, ponderous and with dialogue so insipid you’d sweat it was written by Lucas, it’s almost a chore to sit through. It’s a mess, a complicated hodgepodge of the vile and the glorious coming together to form one of the most ungainly historical epics to hit movie theaters this side of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton wasting time in Cleopatra.

Where to begin… Well, even Stone can’t figure that one out when dealing with the fabled Macedonian conqueror whom by the age of 25 ruled 90% of the known world. He starts the picture with the conqueror’s death at 32 the suddenly fast-forwards forty years to ancient Greece where aged ruler Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) – a former confidant and general in Alexander’s army – relates the story of the former king’s rise to power. Backwards once again, this time almost seventy years to a young Alexander (Connor Paolo) and his warring parents King Philip (Val Kilmer) and the snake-loving Olympias (Angelina Jolie).

Not sure, really, what to say about this portion of the film other than it can’t get over fast enough. Even Christopher Plummer, popping up briefly as a weathered Aristotle, does much to enliven the proceedings. He does, however, set the course for much of the interpersonal relationships in Alexander. Lecturing on the merits of men laying with men, from this point on Stone lets film turn into a gigantic homosexual lollapalooza, a homoerotic bastion of man-on-man passion not seen in a hugely anticipated motion picture since Fellini in his heyday.

Not that I have a problem with that. There is so much nubile, athletically male masculinity on display here to make gay and straight alike sit up and take note. In fact, Colin Farrell (playing Alexander as an adult) and Jared Leto (as the conqueror’s best friend and compatriot Hephaistion) make such beguiling snuggle-buddies – even if they hardly do more than kiss – it’s hard to not get at least a little bit turned on by the whole thing.

But unrequited ardor and a brave openness towards ancient Grecian sexuality does not a movie make, and this labor of love by co-writer/director Stone falls flatter than a Dutch Baby, just without all that yummy cream cheese to make it palatable. Much like Barry Levinson with Toys and Martin Scorsese with New York, New York, the fabled idiosyncratic director of Platoon and Any Given Sunday has taken his most cherished baby of a project and turned it into chaos. Unlike those other two, however, Stone’s film isn’t just crap; it is boringly by-the-numbers crap, something of which neither of Levinson’s nor Scorsese’s films can be accused.

What’s missing isn’t so much the drama – all the pieces are here Stone just never puts them together – but the director’s much heralded – and equally derided – operatic bravado behind the camera. Alexander, save for putting the boy-king’s sexuality front and center, is free from any risk-taking or cinematic daring of any kind. The battle scenes, most notably the Battle of Gaugamela where Alexander’s 40,000-plus army defeated King Darius III’s 250,000, despite being horrifically bloody are rather rote and poorly staged. Not until the final fight, a jungle tussle deep in the wilds of India where horse and elephant face off, does Stone come alive in his patented bizarro fashion, and only then after Alexander takes a potentially life-ending injury. The screen suddenly comes alive in a mix of reds and oranges, while the camera speeds up and down with the beating of the adventurer’s heart. It’s bravura filmmaking and by far the most intense and out-of-left-field sequence in the entire picture, and even if it doesn’t really work it at least held my attention. If only the same could be said for anything else.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Other things did hold my attention, just hardly in a way that could be construed as favorable. Kilmer is over the top and out of place as Philip, calling attention to himself in ways I’m sure Stone never intended (although one scene between father and son in a cave discussing mythological heroes is surprisingly potent). Leto and Hopkins do what they can, but neither has enough to do to make themselves memorable. That’s better than can be said for poor Rosario Dawson as Alexander’s beautiful and ambitious wife Roxanne. Her character is a harpy, an ungrateful savage of a woman betrayed by her petty jealousies seductive conniving. The only thing good about the performance – in a film of ludicrous accents hers is by far the worst and most annoying – is the profound perfection of her breasts. I can only wish mine looked half as ripe and inviting, and, latent homosexuality aside, no wonder Alexander decides to take her for his bride.

One the whole, women are not treated well by Stone in this movie. They are all shells of human beings, more succubae and demon than anything remotely personable. That goes doubly for Olympias, her almost incestuous slitherings towards her son more than enough to send even the biggest Mama’s boy on a 22,000-mile quest away from home. Yet, Jolie is by far the best thing in the whole picture. Nonexistent age difference between her and Farrell aside, she’s the only one seemingly ready to give a performance. Whether sauntering around her room draped in snakes or wickedly snarling her lips around lines laced with poisonous venom, Jolie is a marvel and, much like Rex Harrison did in Cleopatra, she alone makes Alexander nearly worthwhile.

But there is a hole at the center of the movie, and for all of the picture’s attempts at life nothing anyone can do changes it. Farrell, a remarkable actor on most occasions, is fatally miscast. His Alexander is a petulant crybaby, and it is hard to imagine anyone – let alone armies and nations galore – bending themselves to his will. Farrell spends the movie looking like a lost little lamb, his eyes welling up time and time again into the most ghastly looks of pained remorse this side of Robin Williams in his Patch Adams mode. It’s hard to watch, and even the actor’s rugged good looks begin to grow tiresome under this treacle-laced onslaught.

“There will never be another Alexander like you,” says Olympias at one point. A girl can only dream.

Film Rating: ê1/2  (out of 4)