It's been out a while, actually since 2005. I missed seeing it in the theaters, so when I ran across it on Netflix I clicked on it. It came in yesterday.
It's long. So long it needs two DVD discs to hold it. Runs nearly four hours, which is ridiculous for a movie. It's got Oliver Stone directing it. Apparently Stone didn't find any undug dirt on a guy who died 2500 years ago. The movie follows generally accepted history, mostly. It had a decent budget. Sets and costumes and thousands of extras. Palaces in Macedon and Babylon, massive armies. Mediocre score, it's there, it's music, but it ain't John Williams and nobody is going to buy a CD of it. Curse of the soundman was laid on this flick too. Dialog is very hard to hear, the actors mumble, the score is played over the dialog. Excellent camera work. Lots of really nice shots, a young Alexander galloping about on Bucephalus, battle scenes that go on forever, interpersonal confrontations that result in a lot of bad words, but no resolution, except occasionally Alexander looses his temper and slays an old friend at the banquet table. The flick would have been better if a lot of the glorious camera work had been cut down, a lot.
There are some offputting details. The helmets everyone wears don't look very Greek to my eye. Lots of one eyed men, but no black eyepatches, every one eyed man just squints the bad eye shut. A lot of blood. Everyone comes out of each battle covered in blood from head to toe. Never any scenes of washing the blood off after battle. The Greek soldiers (hoplites) don't form a phalanx, three ranks deep, instead they are formed up in blocks a dozen ranks deep. That deep, the rear ranks cannot reach the enemy with their spears. Battle scenes are just a lot of hacking and chopping. We never see how the hoplites use spears, shields, armor, and discipline to defeat ten times their number of Persians.
The movie is unsatisfying. We, the audience, want to see what makes Alexander tick. Here is a guy, still a house hold name today, cities he personally founded still doing business, conqueror of the entire known world, good looking dude too. We want to understand why and how he pulled all this stuff off. Oliver never bothers to tell us. He shows us Alexander's creepy mother (Angelina Jolie) who keeps pet snakes around the house and keeps telling the boy Alexander that he is a god. We see the father beating upon the boy for not being tough enough. We never learn just how Alexander feels about all this. A key scene, the death of his father, and a teen aged Alexander managing to snag the crown of Macedon against a bunch of other tough older bastards is done in flashback. We never do learn just who really offed Philip, was it Alexander, Alexander's mother, or the Persians? Alexander's later sex life is complex, he marries a cute but fierce Persian princess, Roxane, and he has a boy friend. When the boyfriend finally dies of a fever, Alexander chews out Roxanne for it. The one time Alexander speaks of his ambitions, he talks like he just wants to be a tourist, (tourist with an army, but just a tourist). He speaks longingly of wanting to see the Pillars of Hercules, the northern forests, Rome, Britain. This doesn't answer the question of how and why he dragged his entire army into India after the conquest of Persia. Alexander's blond hair grows longer and longer as the movie goes on, his complexion worsens, and his shaving deteriorates, suggesting that he is loosing his grip, but somehow he presses on, keeps the troops with him, and makes it back to Babylon, in time to catch a fever and die.
All and all a colorful swords and sandals epic that doesn't come to grips with the issues we the audience want addressed.
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