michaelarmer

My review title - Overblown tripe is the best thing I can say about this, but I will go through the motions of trying to describe why it is so bad.

First the direction is bad, despite what some people say, its wooden, tension and drama is missing, it seems that the director is trying to copy someone else's film, rather than find his own style. Also the battle scenes are mostly done in close-up and too fast, so its all very confusing, you don't get to see much, I know this is what it must be in real war, but viewers still need to be able to see and understand. Even many of the quiet scenes are done in close-up, too close, I have never liked them. Some scenes are not realistic, like when Alexander is charging the elephant, when the rest of the battlers appear to be far away. I don't like the going forward/going back in time arrangement, something else that is copied, like the ultra-close scenes, if you're going to copy stuff, copy stuff that is good, don't copy crap. If he wanted to copy a film of a similar ancient period, he should of copied the style of Spartacus.

Secondly the acting is wooden, they just seem to be going through the motions, Colin Farrell looks good in his role, as do several others, but his style of acting does not fit the role, and his Irish accent is no good playing a Macedonian, a few other accents were dodgy as well.

Thirdly the music was overblown, and did not fit the scenes well, it could have been brought down an octave or two.

Also continuity was poor, but the going back/forward scenes did not help, perhaps that's why they did them, to save on continuity.

It was too long, similar in length to earlier epics (like Spartacus), but because of it being poor, I just wanted it to end after about an hour and half

Angelina Jolie looked great though, so a small positive against a lot of negatives.

I have read that Alexander - The Final Cut (2014) is a much better version of the same film (which I have not yet seen), apparently after four attempts to get it right, they will have needed to change a lot, including the music score to make it good.

I originally thought this was a documentary series, about ancient Egypt, which I would have been happy to watch, but to my disappointment it turned out to be a dramatic recreation (with voiceover). However I watched it anyway, the first episode was a bit boring at first, and I was thinking of switching off, but persevered with it, I'm glad I did.

The first two episodes (to which this review is about), are about Howard Carter's search for the tomb of Tutankhamun, with support from Lord Carnarvon, and its discovery, and it turned out to be excellent, very realistic, and the acting was great, the voiceover from Andrew Sachs was good as well. The actors are not well known, the most famous being Laurence Fox, who was only in the first episode, but they were really good, the scenes were spot on, and it was well made, the music was not over dramatic, which can sometimes ruin a good film, but its ok here. Also the attitudes of the period it was supposed to be in was spot on. Well done.

8 out of 10 for this.

This is an excellent film, about a man's desire to succeed, and take care of his son, Will Smith is brilliant and Jaden is pretty good too.

However, and this is a big however, why do some people seem to think making lots of money makes them happy?

You can be quite perfectly happy without millions, its true that having lots of money brings you (usually) a better quality of life, but not neccesarily happiness. Take the storyline in this film, Chris sees stockbrokers coming out of a building and sees lots of smiles on their faces, so he assumes that being a stockbroker will make you happy, and he sees the guy in the Ferrari, and wishes he could have one of those. Again having a fast flashy car does not make you happy. At the start of the film, he is happy, and shows flashbacks to happier times, when he was with his partner, thats what happiness is, not the pursuit of money. Ok he got bit in the end, and kept his son, but lost his partner, so he lost that. Maybe he got happy again after he became a stockbroker and got rich, but the film does not show that. I note in the end titles, it states he became a successful stockbroker, and sold his share of a company for millions, great. Buy he lost his partner, lets hope he got another one later. But will it be as good as his first love, I doubt it, because that first relationship is usually the best, any after that, you just ending up comparing them to the first. So if he had done something different earlier, like got a steady job, maybe struggling a bit from time to time, because its that struggle together that makes your relationship stronger, not being rich, so he could have stayed with his first love, with son, and kept that true love for the rest of his life, without earning millions.

But the film was great, I gave it 8 stars.