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Alexander
Warner Bros.


4.4

based on 42 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 142 votes
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FILM:

GAMES:

Alexander (PC)

MPAA RATING: R for violence and some sexuality/nudity

Starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Plummer, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

Based on the true story of one of history's most luminous and influential leaders, Alexander takes a bold, honest look at Alexander's life and his relationships. (Warner Bros.)

GENRE(S):	Adventure \| Drama \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Oliver Stone Christopher Kyle Laeta Kalogridis
DIRECTED BY:	Oliver Stone
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 2, 2005 Theatrical: November 24, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	173 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / UK / Germany / Netherlands

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Vast, riveting, madly audacious movie biography.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's boldly acted, absorbing and satisfying as a history lesson and chock-full of extravagantly brutal battle sequences.

Empire Ian Nathan

Unwieldy and flawed, but Stone remains a tornado in an era of airless formula and -- to paraphrase our Ptolemy -- its failings are greater than most films’ successes.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

If, as the Virgil quote that starts the film claims, fortune favors the bold, Alexander has not been nearly bold enough.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

As one of the few movies around not pushing state-of-the-art animation or Jude Law, Alexander is a damn good date movie.

Time Richard Corliss

Makes for a long, lumpy trip with a charismatic guide and some brilliant detours.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The best there is to say is that it's better than ''Troy."

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

What Alexander lacks in narrative clarity, it makes up for with pomp and pageantry.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

The creators of Alexander set out to make an epic, and they can't be faulted for the many elements that succeed on this scale; what's unfortunate is that they don't quite deliver a camp classic.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Since the movie lacks a vision of what Alexander was really about as a man and a figure in history, it falls back all too frequently on movie spectacle.

Variety Todd McCarthy

At best an honorable failure, an intelligent and ambitious picture that crucially lacks dramatic flair and emotional involvement.

Newsweek David Ansen

Sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic .

ReelViews James Berardinelli

By de-mythologizing Alexander, Stone has turned him into an unbelievable individual. We accept great deeds from great people, not from sniveling whiners.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

What Stone has delivered instead is no folie de grandeur, but rather the last thing one would have expected from him: an honorable failure.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Despite a three-hour running time Stone is too occupied with psychodrama to explore Alexander's innovations in battle, and Farrell, clearly out of his depth, seems less a leader of men than a Hellenistic James Dean.

Slate David Edelstein

Forget Alexander: The film is a pedestal to Angelina the great.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

[Stone] gives us provocative notes and sketches but not a final draft. The film doesn't feel at ease with itself. It says too much, and yet leaves too much unsaid.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Call it "Alexander the Grate," because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Farrell plays all this as if he means it, but he seems slight in the role and without great physical presence. In a scene in which Alexander is roaring at his troops to rouse them to battle, he sounds like Mighty Mouse pretending to be Superman.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

An exhausted epic, one that Stone has directed with an almost startling lack of personality or vision.

TV Guide Ken Fox

There are two stunning battle sequences, and that rose-tinted bloodbath is a stroke of the eccentric genius for which Stone is famous.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Enjoyable in some places, but dreadful in others. It's boring here and exciting there. And it's almost always goofy.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Never have a great historical hero's accomplishments seemed so inconsequential, or so damned hard to figure out.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The happy couple (Farrell/Dawson) do enjoy one great scene together, and it's the high point of the movie-a naked tussle, in which she puts a knife to his throat. The whole sequence is quick, funny, and arousing, in sharp contrast to the rest of Alexander, which is sluggish, unsmiling.

USA Today Mike Clark

A movie that has neither dramatic focus nor a single memorable performance, aside from one or two that are memorable for the wrong reasons?

New York Post Lou Lumenick

As huge a travesty and a bore as 1956's "Alexander the Great," in which Richard Burton looked equally uncomfortable as a blond.

Premiere Peter Debruge

An ambitious disaster, Alexander is the rare historical portrait that leaves you feeling as though you know less about its subject than you did upon entering the theater.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A dreary, overlong and occasionally laughable classical epic about the great Macedonian world conqueror, it's guilty of a sin that no Stone film has ever committed: It's boring.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

After the three hours--though it seemed longer--I was still bewildered. Stone is a unique and fiery talent. Why did he make this film?

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Stone has made an excruciating disaster for the ages.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

This is the costliest, most logistically complex feature of the filmmaker's career, and it appears that the effort to wrangle so many beasts, from elephants to movie stars and money men, along with the headaches that come with sweeping period films, got the better of him.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Although inexplicable brogues and burrs appear and disappear, and although Stone post-produces the dickens of his movie trying to generate the maximum spit-fog of sound and fury, Alexander manages to be as dull as the Victor Mature films of the 1950s, which barely moved at all.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Like every other second of more than 10,000 seconds in Alexander, it doesn't engage in the least.

Film Threat Merle Bertrand

A movie celebrating the life of the greatest military conqueror the world has ever known should feature a bit more conquering.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

There's no zest to the general depravity, no coherence to the script or the spectacle -- clarity is missing in some of the camera work -- and, most important, no character to give a Greek fig about.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It's astounding that the ingenious creator of "JFK" and "Wall Street" could make an epic on war and empire that's so utterly simplistic and unreflective.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Stone tries to make us like Alexander because he's good, when he should have made us want to watch Alexander because he's amazing.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Both the sex and the battle sequences here look like football plays drawn by an NFL coach and shot by the wide receiver's mother. Usually, even when I don't like a Stone film I admire its frenzied energy, but the editing here is as lethargic as the compositions are perfunctory.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Alexander breaks the key rule that makes movies move: Show, don't tell.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie is a monument to egomania - and I don't mean Alexander's.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

This movie is an act of hubris so huge that, in Alexander's time, it would draw lightning bolts from contemptuous gods. Today it will get sniggers from stunned critics and a collective yawn from a public unlikely to share Stone's egomania.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It is, in a word, boring, and that's the most un-Oliver Stone adjective I can think of.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.4 (out of 10) based on 142 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Steve C. gave it a0:
Don't gimme any of this "you have to pay attention" or "you have to enjoy history" garbage. I love history, but even if I overdosed on adderall, I could not offer my attention to this movie. This marked the first time I could not finish a movie. I tried on two separate occasions and both times it took less than an hour before I realized there are so many better things I could be doing and shut it off.

[Anonymous] gave it a6:
If this movie was confusing you obviously don't appreciate history enough to seen nor is it the care or you just weren't paying attention. This movie was not the best I have ever seen nor is it the worst. Alexander is bold and I appreciate it. And to say that the boys are "a little on the thin side and would not have stood at battle" is bias and idiotic.

Tom I. gave it a0:
Very disappointing film. Tried to be an epic but was confusing. Poor acting, the battle scenes were awful. The narration was poor and confused. The 8 year flash back scene was in the wrong place.The camera shots while in a battle scene were too close to actors and you lost all perspective. The story lingered too long on the homosexual side of his life. The fighters were not plausible as they were generally slim boys with makeup and would not have stood up in a battle. See Gladiator if you wish to see how battle scenes should be shot. Don't waste your money by going to see would be my advice.

Tom V. gave it a1:
Unmitigated dreck. Audience, what was left after the first 2 hours, had to be put on suicide watch.

M Kha gave it a0:
Worst ever. I haven't seen any demonstration of Alexander's "greatness"!! Talking about conquering Tyre and Egypt? Did I miss Part I of the movie or am I supposed to take it for granted that he's great by acting like a foolish drunk 99% of the time!

Jessi H. gave it a9:
I loved it. To fully appreciate this, you need to enjoy history, have an open mind, and actually be able to *pay* *attention* to what the 'characters' are saying. Alexander did a *lot,* and Stone is trying to include as much as he can, coherently, to give us the best picture all around of who Alexander really was. And I think that for the most part he did a really good job of acheiving this. I don't care how they marketed the film. I do, however, think that they should have gotten linguistic coaches for their actors in major roles - you cannot have what sounds like a Scottish Crateros, an Irish Alexander, etc. - it takes the viewers out of the movie enough for them to have to tell themselves to ignore that element (and can annoy many people throughout). I really enjoyed this; but I also happen to be the kind of person that loves long movies, enjoys history, has an open mind, and pays attention to what's being said and not said by the characters.

Alexander Warner Bros.

Alexander
Warner Bros.