Alexander - December 2004

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.” Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), "Die Hard," 1989

That quote from the classic Christmas movie was pretty much all I knew about Alexander the Great before seeing Oliver Stone’s "Alexander." I now know that he also had a funeral for his horse, but I learned that from a clue on "Jeopardy" last
week, not from the movie.

I’m pretty sure nothing in "Alexander" adhered to historical fact, but that was not a problem – a movie is about entertainment, after all. No, the problem with "Alexander" is that it was incredibly boring. It was almost three hours long, had about a hundred speaking roles and all the characters looked alike. They didn’t sound much alike, though, with accents from all over the English speaking world, except for Angelina Jolie, who sounded like she just flew in from Transylvania.

No, "Alexander" was just a mess, almost as if the director couldn’t decide which themes to keep and which to cut, so he kept them all. And Colin Farrell, who will need a dump truck to cart home all the Academy Awards (tm) he will win in his career, was either miscast or underplayed it, because his Alexander had no charisma or strength. I’m guessing the leader who conquered most of three continents was kind of charismatic and maybe kind of strong.