‘Alexander’ disappoints students in epic proportions

Excessive film length makes audiences restless

Reel Reflections

Opening in Babylon, Persia, in 323 B.C., "Alexander" begins with the end of Alexander the Great’s life. The film attempts the daunting task of fitting the 32-year life of the restless conqueror into a manageable size but fails — period.

From Alexander’s promising youth to his mysterious death, the audience feels the weight of his empire, and the three-hour-long movie.

"Alexander was like Prometheus — he changed the world," says an aged Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins, "The Human Stain") in the first few minutes of the film. Hopkins narrates the film, looking back to the earliest years of Alexander’s life in Macedonia.

Here, the major players in the film are introduced — Alexander (Colin Farrell, "Phone Booth"), his mysterious mother Olympius (Angelina Jolie, "Tomb Raider") and his father, King Philip of Macedonia (Val Kilmer, "A License to Steal"). In the prince’s formative years in Macedonia, we also meet the band of brothers who will follow Alexander on his 22,000-mile, 8-year campaign from Greece to India.

Skip forward a few years, and the audience arrives at the scorching deserts of Western Persia, where Alexander and his 40,000 troops square off against Darius, the King of Persia’s, 200,000-plus troops. Instead of an epic battle scene, director Oliver Stone ("Platoon") presents a fragmented view of the battle.

Dividing the fight into three distinct flanks, Stone zooms in on hand-to-hand combat, or trails a hawk flying far above the battle below. The overhead view might be helpful in the pivotal battle, but from above, everyone is the same shade of desert brown.

Alexander vanquishes the Persian forces and gains control of the vast Persian Empire, but he doesn’t stop in Babylonia. The film follows the Macedonian forces to the Hindu Kush and down into India. It is here that, like Alexander’s armies, the audience became restless.

Stone spends more time covering Alexander’s campaigns in the Near East and India than he does the major battles Alexander won along the Mediterranean Sea. Three hours is a sizeable chunk of time for a motion picture and Stone squanders it in the tedium of the Indian campaigns.

Without revealing the end — you will just have to endure the film yourself — Alexander returns to Babylonia with visions of an Arabian conquest. The film is, to be sure, a bold, honest look at the life of the military commander who controlled over two million square miles at the time of his death.

For a man who accomplished so much in previous movies, Stone’s epic telling doesn’t do Alexander justice. Where is a History Channel documentary when you need it?