Oliver Stone's long anticipated "Alexander" apparently didn't take long enough in the editing room. The sucker is 175 minutes long and boy does it feel like it.

"Alexander" is about the title character, labelled "The Great" by history, his unmotivated conquest of lands around Babylon, the love of his life named Hephaistion, and his unfounded obsession for wanting everyone to love and remember him.

The picture is loaded with more scenes of characters talking about how great Alexander is, and not enough battle scenes or scenes moving the plot forward. That's purely my opinion. I saw the picture with two big history buffs and both seemed disjointed by the screen time devoted--or NOT devoted I should say--to Alexander's conquests.

The picture wants to focus more on Alexander the man and the influence of friends, lovers, mother, father and so on. We get all these painfully long scenes where dialogue runs in circles, and the point of each scene is lost several times over. It reminds me of a five act Shakespeare tragedy; long winded and dancing around the point, never actually stepping on it.

Colin Farrell (Phone Booth) as the title role does well for himself, despite his speeches getting recited over and over. He keeps a solid consistency throughout the picture, but the character's inner motivation is sketchy at best. I'm sure Farrell had a headache trying to get his teeth into the lack of material during rehearsals.

Rosario Dawson (MIB 2) does well for the viewer. She braves the front of nudity in a big Hollywood epic and, man, am I appreciative. Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie (Taking Lives) appears as Alexander's mother Olmpias, but she does not get naked once. What's HER problem? I feel she overplayed pretty much every scene she had.

Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins (Remains of the Day) narrates the picture as the elderly Ptolemy, famed Greek historian, but the aged actor simply gave us his status quo. Val Kilmer (At First Sight) gave us the same belligerent performance he gave us in "The Doors," so I wasn't impressed by anyone's presence in the picture.

As director, Oliver Stone (Born on the Fourth of July, JFK) has seriously disappointed me with this film. He appeared to stay back on his heels with his visual style; allowed special effects to dictate his shot selection in battle scenes and remained mundane, functional for the dialogue scenes. When we finally got to see a sequence of "Stoning," it was out of place by that point in the movie. Stone is one of my favorite directors, but this shows he can turn out a Hollywood dictated piece of bunk with the best of them, like James Cameron, Michael Bay and other socially useless directors like them.

So, there's all this talk in entertainment media about all the "gay" material in the movie. Some have criticized it for being too much, and some have said it's too little. I am not even going to address it. Men of those times put their penis into ANY hole, so I do not deem any male character in the movie, especially Alexander, homosexual. That being said, there was no "gay" lifestyle in my viewing of the picture, just Babylonian lifestyle. However, there is plenty of screen time devoted to Alexander and his love for Hephaistion, played by Jared Leto (Panic Room); take of that what you will.

Overall, this picture can be forgotten. Don't feel like you're missing anything special. I knew nothing of Alexander's achievements in history, and I definitely felt more informed about them after sitting through this three-hour mess. That is probably all its good for. However, if you're a die-hard history buff, this one may disappoint you. From what I've heard, it's pretty accurate. I found the picture interesting, but far from enjoyable.

Benn - Where's the Humanity?