There comes the moment in the career of many directors when they are compelled to tell the story of a great man in whose life they seem to see a glimmer of their own image. Oliver Stone has Alexander the Great, the Macedonian tyrant who cut a bloody swathe through the ancient world to no obvious end other than, if Mr. Stones big, blowsy movie is to be believed, to get away from his kvetch of a mother. There are moments in Alexander that show Mr. Stone in fine form, including a battle scene shot from the view of a soaring bird and the aching tenderness between the ruler and his longtime lover, Hephaistion (Jared Leto, delivering the only credible performance in the film), but these grace notes are few and far between. This is the costliest, most logistically complex feature of the filmmakers career, and it appears that the effort to wrangle so many beasts, from elephants to movie stars and money men, along with the headaches that come with sweeping period films, got the better of him. The New York Times.