“Uh oh” is the operative phrase here. Leaping and bounding through the high points of Alexander’s life as his army cuts a wide swath through the known word, it has an epic’s budget and a B-movie’s spirit. The requisite heroic music swells in all the right places underscoring dialogue that studded with such classically bilious B-movie gems as “By the Gods”. This is a jumbled mess with a disjointed story line, a klunky flashback, and pedestrian editing with a dab of sex tossed in every so often in an attempt to keep the audience’s interest. Even there, with a captured harem breaking into a spontaneous belly dance or Alexander’s wedding night with an Asian bride (Rosario Dawson) that begins with a slap fight worthy of a kindergarten playground squabble, it’s a tactic that fizzles. It’s also sloppy. A recurring motif of an eagle leading Alexander along on his voyage of conquest is dangled without the explanation that the bird is a symbol of Zeus, king of the gods and putatively Alexander’s real father. At least according to some of the many ravings by  Alexander's mother, Olympias. All things considered, perhaps a turkey would have been a more appropriate symbol for Al to follow. By the time Stone pulls himself together and throws in some of the visual fireworks for which he is justly famous, the effect is one of parody rather than artistry.

Farrell spends his screen time looking either wild-eyed, confused, or sometimes both. It makes for an interesting study in physiognomy, and yet, one that doesn’t quite jibe with the idea of someone who conquered the world by the time he was 32. Then again, the motive Stone gives him for achieving that is a burning desire to get as far away from his mother, the snake-wrapped Olympias, as he can. Undoubtedly a formidable woman in real life, Angelina Jolie’s overwrought histrionics never manage to make her more than a vicious nudge with a peculiar accent that seems to have a stranglehold on her larynx. As for Alexander’s father, King Phillip of Macedonia, Val Kilmer reprises his role as Jim Morrison as played in his earlier collaboration with Stone in THE DOORS

The fact of Alexander’s preference for his general and life-long friend, Hephestion (a wan and fragile-looking Jared Leto), and men in general, is handled with such delicacy that it seems all concerned were more than a little embarrassed to have to deal with it at all.

An issue handled more decisively, and not without a deliberate whiff of contemporary commentary, concerns the beginning of Alexander’s career as a world conqueror. He’s standing on the border of Persia, the forces of King Darius arrayed before him, and the pep talk Alexander gives his men before occupying the country is that they will be setting the inhabitants free and prevent them from further mischief in Macedonia. It’s vintage Stone. Unfortunately, this moment that might have spawned a film that is flawed but intriguing goes nowhere, though not without Alexander mouthing a great deal about uniting the world and the equality of all humankind, generally before engaging in slaughter of some sort. One longs for focus of some sort and one is disappointed at every turn.