Alexander (2004)

This text includes some spoilers of the movie.
Okay todays movie is called "Alexander". A partly historical film about a legendary conqueror, Alexander - played by Colin Farrell, who invaded Persia, Egypt and Asia within 15 years.
The film has got a stunning cast, filled with famous names such as Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie, who no doubt do a good job in their roles. I actually don't have much to complain about the acting of this movie, it's good overall. The only weak moments are in the scenes where there are many people arguing, most of the time, the arguing is just funny, instead of being threatening.

The film itself isn't very consistent. The beginning of the film shows a few very short moments of Alexanders youth, a strange mythology lesson in a cave, and people talking in poetic phrases. The old storyteller, and a narrator of the movie, Ptolemy - played by Anthony Hopkins, does pull the mess together, a bit, but most of the time the movie is jumping from one time period to another, then back to the "present" time, and then moving into a flashback again. For example, after the short briefing of Alexanders youth, where his father is still clearly stated being alive and holding the crown, there's a scene where Alexander is arguing with the current king and practically gets disowned by him. In the next scene the movie tells Alexander is suddently the king and has conquered all the lands around Mediterranean Sea with an army of 40 000 men! What happened? This evokes a hundred questions: "How did he become a king?", "Where is his father?", "Where did he get this army?", "How did he invade all these nations?", "Why did he go for this conquer journey in the first place?", "Why everyone speaks in poetic phrases?".
It's like the movie forgot to tell something. Luckily though, the movie notices this, and explains what happened to his father in a flashback! Yay, not less than one and a half hour later. As if the editors forgot to put the scene earlier in the film and just threw it into some random gap.

The first battle scene is pretty decent, it has a long tension built to it and the action is satisfying. Although the movie seems to take this battle very seriously, but I just couldn't stop myself from laught at the Persian leaders' way of giving orders only by waving his hands and looking straight into the camera without moving a muscle in his face.

Sadly, the battle scenes go downhill afterwards. They become messy, fast paced and difficult to follow. Not to mention, there are very little explanation to any of them. Who are they actually waging war with? No idea, some Indian tribe it seems, they have elephants.

What I'd have liked to see in this movie, was what actually led them into these battles? Surely there weren't an army ready waiting for them in the middle of a desert or a jungle. How did they arrange the battle fields? How did the two parties communicate with each other? How does everyone know english (greece?)?

I don't want to go any further with nitpicking all the details about cliches, nonsense scenes and Jared Leto, because this text would become too long to be read by any sane person.
But as a conclusion, the movie is actually pretty entertaining, as long as you have prepared with proper amount of booze. It has got many good moments, nice sceneries and tense action, but the rest of it is easily forgotten.