BREAK OUT THE HEMLOCK OLIVER STONE'S 'ALEXANDER' A GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE EXPECTED tension going into ``Alexander'' was how well Oliver Stone's own artistic megalomania would be balanced out by his sophisticated historical intellect.

How would his Vietnam veteran's understanding of the warrior's psyche and the horrors that shape it and his nearly unparalleled talent for staging combat action play out? In other words, would it be a relatively fair fight between ridiculousness and profundity, with perhaps a little advantage for the latter?

But the resulting movie is a rout. An absolute mess, ``Alexander'' is narratively disjointed, acted at a laughably hysterical pitch, and so confused about its themes and ideas - not to mention the principal figure's sexual identity - that the big ideas Stone clearly wants to illuminate get upstaged by Colin Farrell's beautifully dyed and coiffed hair. Even the battle sequences disappoint.

Starting off on the wrong foot with an aged Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) - a trusted Alexander general who set himself up as Pharaoh of Egypt following the 33-year-old emperor's untimely death - narrating reams of windbag exposition, the movie ricochets between freak show and deadening discourse for the next nearly three tedious hours. Important actions that should be dramatized are merely mentioned while overwrought encounters that imply the Greeks invented ham along with Western Civilization chew up an inordinate amount of lifetime.

Take Angelina Jolie as Alex's snake-handling mama, Olympia. Employing some wacky Natasha Fatale accent, she fills the child's mind with hateful paranoia about his Greece-conquering dad, one-eyed Philip of Macedonia (played by Val Kilmer, the only actor who seems to be having a good time, as a kind of geriatric party tyrant). This looks unhealthy enough when little kids portray Alex; in scenes with Farrell, one year her junior, Jolie mines veins of creepiness that might surprise even Billy Bob Thornton.

From then on, it's suggested that the main reason Alexander went on to conquer 90 percent of the known world was to get away from his mother. Ludicrous as this sounds, it keeps cropping up in what passes for psychological revelations, especially when it comes to sex.

Apparently, the last-minute panic surgery that's been performed on the film cuts out anything explicit about the conqueror's widely presumed bisexuality. But it only renders his trembling exchanges with liquid-eyed best buddy Hephaistion (Jared Leto) utterly, well, unmanly. As for the other side of that coin, Alex's wedding night encounter with Central Asian Princess Roxane (Rosario Dawson) expresses all the humanity of two werewolves in heat.

It must be said, however, that the film's finest cinematic moments follow the removal of Dawson's blouse. Production designer Jan Roelfs also does a mighty fine job of visualizing the city of Babylon, the most elaborate jewel of Alexander's conquests. But two towering examples of cosmetic engineering do not an epic make.

Stone erred on the side of accuracy when it came to staging the first of the film's two great action sequences, the battle of Gaugamela, in which 47,000 Greeks and Macedonians won the day against 250,000 Persians. Early on, Stone and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (``Amores Perros'') do an excellent job of laying out the battlefield and initial stages of Alexander's brilliant strategy. But then, y'know, dust. Halfway through the fighting, all coherence is lost in a blinding sandstorm, as no doubt occurs in real desert combat. But there are reasons why films should differ from life, and this unsatisfying scene is one of them.

Technical problems plagued the closing battle sequence, set in India - much of the footage was ruined by airport X-rays when it was shipped from a Thailand location. Still, the confusion phalanx-forming Greeks felt in unmaneuverable rain forests isn't involvingly conveyed by a visual plan that is just simply confused.

As is the jumble of philosophical ideals, administrative challenges, betrayals and revenge killings that Alexander has to deal with while trying to keep his increasingly polyglot army on its remarkable winning streak. Ham-fistedly scripted by Stone, Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogridis, the dialogue poor Farrell must pretend to understand would defeat actors 10 times his caliber. That Dublin's pub king doesn't even look like he's enjoying any of Alexander's drunken revels is a sad indication of how unbeatable the challenge was.

Indeed, if he ran his campaigns like Stone made this movie, Alexander likely wouldn't have accomplished anything much greater than playing with his mother's snakes.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

ALEXANDER - One and one half stars

(R: violence, nudity, sex)

Starring: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson.

Director: Oliver Stone.

Running time: 2 hr. 55 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Badly structured, embarrassingly acted epic about the great Macedonian empire-builder. Even the battle scenes are poorly staged, which is an Oliver Stone first.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Pledge week? No, it's Oliver Stone's ``Alexander,'' with Colin Farrell, in dark toga, holding court as the title character in the historical epic.

(2) ``Alexander'' follows the Macedonian ruler over the course of several battles, but the film never conquers its many flaws.