Stars:
**
Rating: R for extreme
violence and sexuality
Run
Time: 2
hours, 55 minutes
All Hail
Alexander the Great, the great military genius who set out to conquer the world
and came perilously close to getting the job done. Unfortunately Oliver Stone’s
ambitious ode to the King of Macedon doesn’t.
It begins with
Alexander the boy (Jessie Kamm), groomed to be ever the best but so thoroughly
cowed by his sorceress mother (Angelina Jolie as Olympias) that he can’t break
the ties that bind. This sets the stage for a thorny tangle of Freudian
consequence as sultry, vicious Olympias determines that her little man will
ultimately rule
The noble
empire of
What’s not
to love about the creation of a world monarchy and a naked ambition to spread a
cosmopolitan Hellenistic culture across the planet? Its historical relevance can’t be denied nor
can its richly extravagant detail, but Alexander
is steeped in an all-consuming aura of audacious indulgence.
If there is
one aspect of Alexander that
needs to remain constant its Farrell’s skill at authenticating the power and
glory that defined O Megas Alexandros.
Blonde and feminine with Irish brogue at hand, Farrell doesn’t generate
the iniquitous fire necessary to portray a true warrior and masterful leader.
No megalomaniacal verve, no authoritative command, just tentative micro-management
and an uneasy lunacy that offers the illusion of strength.
From top to
bottom the cast works the project with histrionic gusto. Anthony Hopkins as Old Ptolemy (King of
Ancient Egypt) has the dubious distinction of narrating from an elder statesman
point-of-view, complete with subservient scribe furiously jotting notes for the
sake of the history books. Jolie calculates coup after coup in the sinuous tradition
of her reptilian co-stars.
Rosario
Dawson is furiously out of control as Alexander’s exotic Batrician wife Roxane,
more lawless Goddess than fit for a Queen. Jared Leto lends Alexander’s
lifelong lover Hephaestion a glaring wounded pride but finds his narratively
pivotal man-on-man love scenes left somewhere on the cutting room floor.
The scope
of Stone’s arrogant theatrics impress, from the digital display that is
Mesopotamia’s splendorous Babylon (reminiscent of D.W. Griffith’s overblown Intolerance) to a lone eagle flying
over the massive hordes of battle to an elephant-charged skirmish extraordinaire
in India’s fertile jungle.
The mad
genius has opened his veins for this amalgam of art and trash but the final
diagnosis is sloppy, ungainly and semi-contrived. Alexander doesn’t attain the stylish swords-and-sandals majesty
of Gladiator or even the
sparkling junctures of its pale imitator