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Alexander Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: R (for violence and some sexuality/nudity) Theater release: November 24, 2004 by Warner Bros. Directed by: Oliver Stone Runtime: 2 hours 56 minutes Cast: Cast Colin Farrell (Alexander), Rosario Dawson (Roxane), Anthony Hopkins (Old Ptolemy), Angelina Jolie (Olympias), Val Kilmer (Philip), Jared Leto (Hephaistion) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Years ago, when I was a teenager obsessed with history, I began to wonder why Christ had come to Earth at the particular time that he did. Why not a century or two earlier or later? I eventually settled on the idea that he had come at the time that would have been most opportune for spreading the gospel—a time after the Greeks had unified many of the world's cultures and bestowed on them a common language, and a time after the Romans had unified many of the world's governments. It seemed unfair, then, that the Bible had almost nothing to say about the Greek empire; the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Roman empires all had major roles to play, but apart from an obscurely-written prophetic passage or two, the Greeks fell into that gap between the Testaments.

Likewise, there have been very few films about Alexander the Great and his conquests; the genre of the ancient epic is so dominated by biblical stories that, traditionally, even films that concern themselves with pagan history have been obliged to at least refer to the looming arrival of Christianity in their narration. The last major film about Alexander, which starred Richard Burton and came out in 1956, even tweaked the dialogue in places so that it sounded kind of biblical, and concluded with Alexander becoming a monotheist. But thanks to Gladiator, unapologetically pagan epics are now in vogue, and thus Oliver Stone has finally fulfilled his years-old ambition to commit the life of Alexander to celluloid.

Colin Farrell riding high as Alexander the Great

It's a good thing Troy, another thoroughly pagan Greek story, came out just a few months ago and revived the myth of Achilles for modern audiences, since the historical Alexander evidently fancied himself a descendant of Achilles, and he lived by the same basic principles: live fast, die young, and be famous forever for your glorious deeds in battle. Stone's film is probably better than Troy, which suffered from pedestrian direction, stilted performances, and a hack musical score that sounded like it was written in a weekend; in place of those things, Stone gives us some truly stirring visuals, music that soars and charges more often than not, and, um, performances that … Well, um, okay, about those performances …

Framing devices aside, the film begins when Alexander is a boy, growing up within a highly dysfunctional royal family. His father, King Philip (Val Kilmer), is prone to drunken rages, and the sight of guests raping slaves of either gender is a not uncommon feature at official banquets. One night, Philip even storms into the bedroom of his wife, Queen Olympias (Angelina Jolie), and tries to force himself on her, oblivious to the fact that their son is right there in the room with them. Olympias, who claims to be descended from Achilles, drives a wedge between father and son by telling Alexander his real father is not Philip, but one of the gods themselves; and although he seems to believe it, the adult Alexander (Colin Farrell) still objects when his father takes another wife and the new in-laws insinuate that Alexander is illegitimate and therefore not fit to inherit his father's throne.

Here the story lurches ahead rather awkwardly. The story of Alexander is told through the eyes of Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), a general of his who went on to become Pharaoh in Alexandria, and who is now dictating the story of their conquests some 40 years later to a scribe in that city's famous library. This device allows Stone, who wrote the screenplay with Christopher Kyle (K-19: The Widowmaker) and Laeta Kalogridis (TV's Birds of Prey), to stitch the dramatic episodes together with scenes of long exposition, but at times you scratch your head and wonder just how Stone selected which scenes to dramatize.

King Philip (Val Kilmer) and Alexander (Colin Farrell)

In a single speech, Ptolemy casually refers to Philip's assassination, Alexander's invasion of modern-day Turkey, his butchering and enslaving of select cities, and his visit to an Egyptian oracle who proclaimed him divine. How did Alexander and his mother react to Philip's death? Indeed, what role might they have played in it? And what about Alexander's fateful crossing of the river into Asia—the last time he ever saw European shores? Surely moments like these need a bit of fleshing out; and indeed, Stone does return to one of these events, but in a flashback that appears at an odd moment much later in the film.

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