Reviews

Films

Alexander

Directed by Oliver Stone, starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jo

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Oliver Stone is not the right choice to make, say, an adaptation of Little Women. But he's the man should we need to get inside the head of a serial killer, broker or president. He makes movies about men whose fates dictate that they live extraordinary lives. So in this regard, it makes sense that he would look back to one of the greatest megalomaniacs of all time, Alexander. Despot, warrior, bisexual, general and visionary, Alexander also works as a useful comparison to current leaders with questionable ambitions.

Born to dysfunctional parents, its no wonder that Alexander would later struggle psychologically. Taught by his sorceress mother Olympias (Angelina Jolie) to revel in delusions of grandeur and kept at distance by his dad, King Phillip, Alexander lacks either a steady guiding hand or anyone telling him to get his head out of the clouds. As a result, once King, the golden haired boy leads his army on a bloody rampage through Asia in a quest to bring the barbarians up to speed on everything Greek.

Played with wide-eyed enthusiasm by Colin Farrell, Alexander is presented to us as a tough private school type allowed endless slack to indulge in mythical fantasies (still, it can be argued that empires are borne from a single vision). But it is Angelina Jolie who steals the show, slivering her way across the screen and slurring with a Transylvanian accent. She is the most captivating sight in an ambitious film of which Stone never seems full in control. But fans of the director's macho sympathies will get their dose of oiled warfare. Ben Davey

City Hall

Directed by Harold Becker, starring Al Pacino, John Cusack

From the credits we see can that the all-star cast of City Hall was armed with a script written by heavy hitters. The guy who wrote Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader, is credited, as is Goodfellas scribe Nicholas Pileggi and a former New York Deputy Mayor. As you would expect then, this political drama is a talky affair which quotes both ancient and modern men of influence - from Pericles to Kennedy. Thankfully, the formidable trio of Al Pacino, Danny Aiello and John Cusack are on hand deliver the lion's share of the good lines.

A complex plot involving the Big Apple's Mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino), his deputy, a triple homicide and the mob, City Hall starts off with the slayings. A detective and the nephew of a crime boss shoot in each other dead and a 6-year-old boy is killed in the crossfire. After finding out that the nephew should have been jailed for past crimes, Deputy Mayor Kevin Calhoun (Cusack) uncovers a scandal that could tie some of the most powerful men in the city to shady dealings with the criminal underworld.

With occasional glimpses of greatness, City Hall is nothing if not ambitious. Directed by Harold Becker (Sea of Love), this is an example of the dangers of writing by committee. It is a difficult film to follow at times simply because of its aspirations to be so many things at once (a police procedural, a political potboiler, a mob drama). However, the performances, particularly from Pacino, Cusack and Aiello are all top notch and a few scenes in which they feature will resonate perhaps long after you forget how the film actually ends. BD

(China Daily 01/31/2008 page20)