Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer and Colin Farrell star in a scene from the motion picture "Alexander." (Gannett News Service, Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. Pictures) Alexander Starring: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Rosario Dawson. Director: Oliver Stone. Rated R: Strong violence, nudity, sex. Running time: 173 minutes. view the trailer | official website The true story of one of history's most luminous and influential leaders, Alexander the Great-–a man who had conquered 90% of the known world by the age of twenty-seven. Alexander led his virtually invincible Greek and Macedonian armies through 22,000 miles of sieges and conquests in just eight years, and by the time of his death at the age of thiry-two had forged an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. The story chronicles Alexander's path to becoming a living legend, from a youth fueled by dreams of myth, glory and adventure to his lonely death as a ruler of a vast Empire.

Nov 23, 1:21 PM

'Alexander' great? Well, not exactly

BY JACK GARNER
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Good movies show you, they don't tell you.

If a narrator has to ramble on with background and descriptions -- and then wraps up the film by telling you why it all matters and how you're supposed to feel, well, then that movie is flawed.

Oliver Stone's epic "Alexander" is flawed. Despite several sequences of awesome visual imagination and excitement, Stone still needs Anthony Hopkins to explain everything about the legendary warrior king of the ancient world.

Hopkins plays Ptolemy, who fought alongside Alexander the Great as a young man. As the film opens, he's an aged fellow in Egypt, dictating a memoir about Alexander. He explains the lad's roots, his motives for conquest, and his other considerable achievements, while pointing at maps and ancient illustrations.

We are then shown flashback scenes from Alexander's life -- the young Macedonian prince being taught by Aristotle (Christopher Plummer), his love-hate relationships with his complex and often-warring parents, the roughhew King Philip (Val Kilmer) and the seductive and manipulative Olympias (Angelina Jolie), Alexander's rise to the throne (now played as a young adult by Colin Farrell), a few key battles on his seven-year march through Persia and points further east, his bisexual love affairs, his marriage to the exotic Roxane (Rosario Dawson) and more, spread out over nearly three hours.

However, instead of flowing one into the other, the scenes from Alexander's extraordinary 33 years of life too often come at the filmgoer like turned pages from Ptolemy's book. They're more like tableaus than parts of a cohesive narrative.

And although most segments are shown in consecutive order, Stone and his co-writers have inexplicably chosen to put the death of Philip out of sequence -- saving his assassination (and the corresponding crowning of Alexander) for near the end.

Stone and his co-writers seem challenged to explain Alexander's motivations for his seven-year eastward odyssey of bloody warfare; pointing to a variety of factors from an aggressively determined mother who wanted her son to be a god to a gruff father who wanted him to be a man to a philosophical teacher who wanted him to civilize the world.

Farrell makes a valiant effort as Alexander, but it's a little hard to get over the dark actor's blond hair. Much more disturbing is the film's lackadaisical approach to accents. Stone called in all sorts of ancient authorities to make sure clothing and customs and warfare are all historically accurate. Then he lets each actor speak with whatever accent he or she chooses. It makes no sense.

Farrell, who can do a fine flat English accent, speaks in his native Irish brogue; Jolie assumes some sort of Germanic accent; an unknown actor emerges from the soldiers to make a key speech in a Scottish tone.

Granted, we don't expect them to speak an ancient tongue (unless they're in a Mel Gibson movie), but the English should all be consistent.

"Alexander" reportedly cost $150 million to make -- and it's all on the screen in spectacular set pieces, particularly the lush and lavish hanging gardens of Babylon. The spectacle of "Alexander" is undeniable. But so are the film's failings.