Alexander

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of director Oliver Stone's work. His past films have been groundbreaking, and any new Stone project should be considered a big deal. When that project is his first theatrical feature film in five years (after two, count ‘em, two separate documentaries on Fidel Castro) there is real cause for celebration. When said feature is also one of the most ambitious of his career, then there is good reason to get excited.

Alexander is a big-budget account of the life and death of Alexander the Great, King of the Macedonians who conquered most of the known world by the time of his death at the age of 32. It is a movie full of passion, political maneuvering and personal conflicts, epic battles and more of Rosario Dawson then I thought I would ever have the pleasure of seeing.

Stone has never been the kind of filmaker to spoon-feed his audience. His films are visually busy and challenging from a storytelling perspective, and Alexander is no different. Passive viewers may not be able to follow the progression of the story. Which isn’t to say that it is dense or confusing. The story of Alexander the Great is a complex one, and Stone and his collaborators Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogrides constructed a screenplay that successfully crams a lot of information into a workable film length. The film runs nearly three hours, yet like all good movies, never drags.

The story, which opens with Alexander as a young boy, really takes off once Colin Farrell takes over as the 18 year old Alexander. Farrell turns in a strong performance, and I was initially shocked at my ability to forget that it was Farrell at all. Some actors have a tendency to always be visible regardless of the role (think latter day DeNiro), but when watching Farell I never felt aware that I was watching a performance. The same can be said of the rest of the cast. Everyone here turns in a great performance with the most notable being Val Kilmer as King Phillip, the breathtaking Angelina Jolie as Alexander’s mother Olympias, Anthony Hopkins as the elder Ptolemy and Rosario Dawson as the mysterious Roxane.

Starting with The Doors in 1991 and ending with '97's U-Turn, Stone created a series of films that pushed the envelope in terms of visual design and editing. Many of the techniques he utilized in his previous films influenced an entire generation of filmmakers. Alexander is a bit of a departure. The film is not as visually busy as his work from the 90s, yet it is bears Stone’s truly unique stamp. The camera always seems to be at the right place at the right time, and his treatment of the film’s final battle in India is simply gorgeous and stands as one of the most memorable sequences of his career.

Alexander is a remarkable film. It's Bold and boisterous; subtle and beautiful. It stands as Stone’s strongest feature since Natural Born Killers and is a worthy addition to a stable of films that are a genre unto themselves. See it on the big screen while there is still time.