Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

I've been looking forward to this one for a while. Colin Farrell! Olly Stone! Historical figure! Massive set piece battles! Hunky men! I mean, how could it fail?

There have been discontented rumblings about the movie for a while and it seemed to have a left a lot of the US folks deeply underwhelmed. I was determined to read as little as possible however, wanting to go into the cinema and make up my own mind.

So, does it succeed? Is it an epic picture about an epic hero?

Not quite, I'm afraid.

Let's be clear about the good things. The cinematography is superb, the battle scenes are astoundingly well staged, the scenery is used to full and glorious effect. The battles are as bloody and realistic as promised, with blood being sprayed, limbs being lopped and goriness abounding. I did really like the fact that Alexander does not emerge from each battle in pristine dress, but bloody and with new wounds. In a rare display of authenticity, this hero bears his scars of battle across the years, with permanent scars on his arms and face throughout the movie, as do his fellow soldiers. That was a nice touch, showing the realism of combat and not since Gladiator has the grim aftermath in the hospitals or on the battle field been more horrifically shown.

What about the acting? Farrell is decent as Alexander, but he's never entirely comfortable in the man's skin. On the battlefield, yes, there you believe this is the man that conquered the known world. Elsewhere - less so. Now this may or may not be due to his reputation but he never sold Alexander's devotion to his life long love, Hephastion to me. There are several supposedly deep and meaningful scenes between these two and, frankly, I was bored. This was supposed to be a passionate love, but rarely, if at all, did the acting convey that. I don't know if the fault is Farrell's or my perception, but certainly he needed better direction here I feel. It's a solid performance, but I didn't come out of that movie having really learned anything about the man. Oh there's hints about his possibly incestuous relationship with his mother, his "troubled" relationship with his father, his obsession with Achilles and his legend but it's superficial at best. It didn't help that even I, with not the sharpest hearing on the planet, kept detecting traces of Ooirish brogue in some of the bigger speeches. :)

Angelina Jolie as his mother Olympias and Val Kilmer as his father Philip of Macedonia have oodles of scenery chewage and they chew it very well. It will be a travesty if either get nominated for an Oscar though, there's just a fraction too much ham in both their roles for my tastes. Still, considering Jolie and Farrell are about the same age, she was pretty convincing as his mother and Farrell has some of his best scenes with her. Kilmer was nearly unrecognisable as Philip and there's a nice dichotomy between him and Farrell. Kudos too, to the lad who played Alex as a teen, he was actually pretty darn cool and his scenes really worked for me.

So what didn't I like? Well, the use of Ptolomy as a narrative device was, at best, clumsy. The movie opens with old Ptolomy (Hopkins) waffling on for several minutes about greatness and Alexander and what he achieved and *zzzzzzz*. Not the best way to start a movie. And then throughout the film, his voice over narration is used to fill in the gaps between scenes, which is bloody annoying because there's some damn important information hidden in these voice overs. For example, we're initially just told that Philip is murdered and that Alexander is now conquering Persia. Eh? Do what? Last we saw them both, they were having a very public row about succession to Philip's throne, with Alexander being exiled. Beh. And then, for no good reason that I could discern, towards the end of the film we're taken back to Philip's murder in flashback. Wha..? Why?! Was that supposed to explain why Alexander went off his rocker and killed one of his captains? If it was to show his fear of conspiracy, they'd pretty much already done that with an earlier scene where Alexander is nearly poisoned. Beh. So no, not a fan of the narration at all. Hopkins bookends the film and, frankly, while he's a superb actor, this was a total waste of his talent and the scenes could have been done without completely.

Structurally, the film is a bit of a sprawl. In terms of pacing, it's slooooow and for a nigh on 3 hour movie, that's not good. For all the talk of battles, there's also a hell of a lot of talk and talk and talk, to no real purpose. There's a least one scene, the "mutiny" (at least, I think that's what it was...) that goes nowhere and several heart to hearts that do nothing for either the plot or our understanding of motivations.

I've touched on the fact that we never really get to understand Alexander. Or at least, I didn't. I'm willing to believe I may have missed things, but I don't think I'm that dense. What drove this man? Was it his mother's obsessive and smothering love? Was it a need to prove himself to dear ol' psychotic Pa? Stone never provides an answer to that and while history might not have the answers, I'd have liked him to offer up something more than hints and whispers. He's not a man who's afraid to have opinions so why wimp out now?

So. Overall what do I think? Well for an epic, it's going to be very watchable on TV, which is not a good thing. There's some good bits, one or two very good bits and way too much stuff that's nothing in particular. Some good performances here and there help, but a much tighter script and bit less scenery chewing would have done this film a world of good. Stone was trying to do Lawrence of Arabia and he's fallen short. Very pretty, but ultimately not one that's going to have the punters bouncing out of the cinemas going "Woah!"