Alexander
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: November 24, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
40
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
16
Negative:
18
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
38
PremierePeter 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. Read full review
38
USA TodayMike 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? Read full review
38
New York PostLou Lumenick
As huge a travesty and a bore as 1956's "Alexander the Great," in which Richard Burton looked equally uncomfortable as a blond. Read full review
33
Portland OregonianShawn 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. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMichael 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. Read full review
30
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Stone has made an excruciating disaster for the ages. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla 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. Read full review
30
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Like every other second of more than 10,000 seconds in Alexander, it doesn't engage in the least. Read full review
30
Film ThreatMerle Bertrand
A movie celebrating the life of the greatest military conqueror the world has ever known should feature a bit more conquering. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe 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.
30
The New RepublicStanley 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? Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Alexander breaks the key rule that makes movies move: Show, don't tell. Read full review
25
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The movie is a monument to egomania - and I don't mean Alexander's. Read full review
25
Charlotte ObserverLawrence 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. Read full review
25
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie 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. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick 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. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorDavid 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. Read full review
11
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It is, in a word, boring, and that's the most un-Oliver Stone adjective I can think of. Read full review
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