Oliver Stone faced a daunting task in covering the epic story of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian general had half the known world conquered by the time he was 30. Alexander was a figure who has become mythical for his ambitions and achievements. With the experience Stone gained in \Platoon"" and ""JFK,"" he could have directed a masterpiece that looked at the man behind the legend. Sadly, he chose to take the route of last summer's lackluster ""Troy,"" replacing plot development with poor editing and talented acting with toned muscles and pretty faces.
Through the lectures of Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), the film explores the life of Alexander (Colin Farrell) as he rises to power. Son of King Philip (Val Kilmer) and Queen Olympias (Angelina Jolie), Alexander learns the ways of battle and leadership at an early age. When his father is murdered, he takes the reins of power, driven by a desire to emulate the ancient heroes and gods of myth. Sweeping from Greece to India, Alexander pushes his army to the breaking point in his pursuit of the unattainable.
The success of the film depends on the title character, but Farrell gives the role none of the intensity he had in ""Minority Report"" or ""Phone Booth."" Instead, Farrell displays highlighted hair that could be confused with Owen Wilson or Fabio and acting that could be confused with a two-year-old before a tantrum. He whines his way through the entire epic, screaming at his armies with an inexplicable Scottish accent and somehow commanding their loyalty nonetheless.
His co-stars sadly manage to make Farrell look good in comparison. Jolie displays a Cleopatra-style snake fetish and creates a borderline incestuous relationship with her son, while Hopkins' rambling speeches on Alexander's success only convince audiences the man has gone senile. Kilmer tries to bring across some royal strength balanced with drunkenness, but he is indistinguishable from any of the actors playing Alexander's miscellaneous generals.
The acting issues in the film are compounded by severe problems in continuity. Early on in the film, Hopkins tells the audience that Philip was murdered and Alexander conquered Egypt, skipping years of development crucial to the story. The flashback scene depicting his father's murder is instead placed squarely in the middle of the film, as if while editing the movie Stone remembered the scene and inserted it because it was too late to go back.
These problems bury issues that would otherwise be groundbreaking, such as the strong undercurrent of homoeroticism in the film. Alexander and his friend Hephaestion (Jared Leto) have a relationship noteworthy only for its awful development, with declarations of love seemingly lifted from romance novels and dragging on for minutes. Another example comes from a disturbingly androgynous black-haired servant who has no role except standing around bare-chested and staring at Alexander.
The film's weaknesses also manage to bury the film's few strengths. The battle scenes against the Persians and Indians are masterfully done, using camera techniques and lighting similar to the battles in ""Gladiator."" Stone makes them as bloody as possible, with one scene showing a man using a head as a weapon and another showing an elephant's trunk hacked off.
In trying to cover the legendary campaign to rule the world, Stone overextends himself and fills the whole movie with a sense that no resolution can be salvaged. Close to the end of the film, Alexander tells a young Ptolemy, ""Let us go on until we find the end,"" but with all the errors in the way, that end isn't worth finding.
