Genre: Action, Adventure, War, Drama, Epic, Biography, Period Piece, Military, Gore, Gay/Lesbian, Political, Melodrama, Doctor
Tagline: Fortune favors the bold
Plot: The story is an epic that is as daring, bold and ambitious as its subject, a relentless conqueror who by the age of 32 had amassed the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Past and present collide to form the puzzle of the protagonist, a tapestry of triumphs and tragedies in which childhood memories and Alexander's rise to power unfold side by side with the latter day expansion of his empire, its gradual decline and ultimate downfall. From his youth, fueled by dreams of glory and adventure, to his lonely and mysterious death as a ruler of a vast state, from the tumultuous relationship with his parents -- a powerful king and a queen determined to put her child on the throne at any cost, including murder -- to the rousing "band of brothers" bond with his closest companions and vast army, as they fought from the sun-scorched battlefields of the Persian Empire across the snow-peaked mountains of India, the film chronicles Alexander's journey to become a living legend. For as Virgil wrote, "Fortune favors the bold." And no king or emperor, either before or after, ever achieved such fortune, or indeed was so bold, as Alexander the Great.Alexander was many things to many people – a dashing warrior king, filled with ambition, courage and the arrogance of youth, leading his vastly
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 Alexander becomes the second big-budget, ancient world epic to fail this year. Unlike Troy, however, which tried unsuccessfully to please crowds, Alexander doesn't bother to make the attempt. Never has Stone's predilection for maverick cinema been more evident and more damaging to the end product.  --James Berardinelli (ReelViews)
Despite the fact that arrows fly, camels charge, and blood flows with reckless abandon, it all comes across as a particularly dry history text. ALEXANDER takes as its subject one of the most colorful, larger-than-life people to have ever walked the planet and turned him into a petulant child with shockingly pedestrian family issues and a bad haircut.  --Andrea Chase (Killer Movie Reviews)
Certainly it's brought out the worst in terms of the puerile writing, confused plotting, shockingly off-note performances and storytelling that lacks either of the two necessary ingredients for films of this type, pop or gravitas.--Manohla Dargis (The New York Times)
Ironically, Alexander's absolute devotion to its seething vision turns it from the merely unwatchable to the deliciously camp. Oliver Stone doesn't do anything half-assed and his full-throttle efforts here push the entire affair over the top. D--Rob Vaux (Flipsidemovies.com)
'Alexander’ is huge train wreck of a movie – a spectacle that’s an instant camp classic and guilty pleasure.--Harrison Cheung (Movie-Gurus.com)
Even the film's scarce fight sequences come off as disappointing, thanks to a surfeit of quick cuts and Stone's reliance on handheld cameras. But what it really comes down to is the fact that much of Alexander is just boring, unlikely to appeal to anyoneexcept the most ardent history buff.  --David Nusair (Reel Film Reviews)
But not even an elephant load of money and state of the art effects are enough to get past one small problem: as towering a figure as Alexander was, his story may be too unwieldy to tame.  --Blake Snyder (MovieWeb)
Stone wanted to make Alexander a riveting epic tale, but most of his material isn’t very intriguing. Strangely, though, it never really struck me as awful, when watching it. --Danny Baldwin (BucketReviews.com)
One wants to leave “Alexander” thinking of the good parts and what might have been. But the memories of the lame, the dumb, the ridiculous are inescapable. ... People always leave an Oliver Stone movie arguing; here, however, they’ll only be arguing about why they bothered to sit through the whole thing. --David Cornelius (eFilmCritic.com)
“Alexander” goes on forever, though, becoming a grueling cinematic ordeal that loses whatever appeal it might have had less than halfway through. After three hours, nothing is funny anymore. --Loey Lockerby (eFilmCritic.com)
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| Written by |
Oliver Stone
Scarface, Year of the Dragon, 8 Million Ways to Die |
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| Cast |
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 | Angelina Jolie
Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider |
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 | Brian Blessed
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Much Ado About Nothing |
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 | Jared Leto
Requiem for a Dream, American Psycho, Panic Room |
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| Music By |
Vangelis
Blade Runner, Chariots of Fire, Bitter Moon |
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| "Alexander" is an excessive, massive film, "spectacular" only in the sense that it features many actors making spectacles of themselves. At 175 minutes in length yet not nearly deep enough to justify such extremes, it reeks with pretension. It is, to putit bluntly, a bad movie, certainly Stone's worst. D+ --Eric D. Snider (EricDSnider.com)
Softness, irrational emotions and bloating are just some of the symptoms that plague Oliver Stone's Alexander, unless you count the bombast or the senseless melodrama. --Lynda Lin (The Movie Insider)
Oliver Stone's sweeping epic, "Alexander," is a beautifully wrapped package, but open it up and there's nothing there.--Paul Clinton (CNN Showbiz)
The whole movie wasn’t that good, but jeez, some of those scenes made it worth the three hours…for me at least. A---Zak Santucci (TheCinemaSource)
What we're left with is less a well-rounded character study than a 3-hour Cliffs Notes version, riddled with gaps that undermine whatever curiosity the viewer may have had and too long to sustain whatever interest the viewer may have developed. Like Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur, Oliver Stone's Alexander seeks to make the myth more real but ends up only making it dull.--Ed Owens (CineScene)
While I applaud Stone for wrenching Alexander out of the realm of myth and into a more realistic world, this makes for a seriously boring film. The acting is superb almost all the way around, and the film is put together quite well, but when it comes to story, Alexander doesn't have a leg to stand on. 5.5/10--W. Andrew Powell (The Gate.ca)
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