A WILD CARD amid the least interesting array of year-end "prestige" prospects in a long time, Oliver Stone's antiquity exercise turns out to be not nearly so wild as one might have hoped. It's neither inspired enough to transcend (or at least revivify) Hollywood costume-epic clichés nor gaga enough to be enjoyable as an auteurist whopper with extra cheese. Instead, these three hours cover a lot of ground without ever quite transporting you anywhere. Colin Farrell plays the warrior king, son of one-eyed Macedonian wino Philip (Val Kilmer) and conniving Greek sorceress Olympias (Angelina Jolie, channeling Maria Montez), who conquered nearly all the "known world" by age 25. He continued onward as far as India before dying at 32, his "mobile empire" soon collapsing amid the infighting of various would-be successors. Was he driven primarily by wanderlust? A bottomless thirst for battle? Ambition? Or simply the desire to stay as far from monster-mama as possible? Stone prefers to view Alexander as a sort of one-world visionary who wanted to unite all diverse cultures under his (admittedly dictatorial) rule. "No tyrant ever gave back so much!" thumbs-up narrator Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) insists in the stilted framing sequences. En route to the protracted ending (coming well after a psychedelic combat climax, Stone's sole stylistic gamble here), we get one huge but incoherent battle, several sexy-dancing-barbarian-babe production numbers, not much Rosario Dawson as Alexander's poorly chosen first wife, and more (but still not enough) Jared Leto as his lifelong, wink-wink "best friend," Hephaistion. There were rumors of arm-wrestling between Stone and the studio over "gay sex scenes." None are evident in the final edit, which emerges forthright enough in suggesting homosexual love-lust to make mainstream mall patrons very uncomfortable – yet at the same time, apologetic, teasing, and vaguely disapproving enough to frustrate those who'd hoped for a megabudget Persian Boy. In the end, however, Alexander's most worrisome judgment calls take place out of bed. Forget the trifling fact that Jolie is one year older than her screen "son." Why on earth have most of the actors been instructed to sport Irish accents? The biggest problem is miscasting: Farrell can do brash but (like similarly golden-helmet-headed Brad Pitt in Troy) is no bold leader of men. Trying to enlarge himself, he gets bug-eyed and screamy. And despite all his urinal-comparison fascination with fellow legendary alpha males, Stone isn't a natural manager of spectacle, exoticism, or the grand narrative scale. You know he's looking in the mirror when he has Hopkins say of our hero, "His failures towered over other men's successes." (So, this is all about size after all!) But Alexander isn't a great folly. It is, alas, just a long, handsome, respectably crafted letdown. (Dennis Harvey)