Ancient warfare movies

[machinor]

you saw that too? that was good indeed.

but I was dissapointed at the location-Gaugamela was a plain, not a desert

and the depiction of the persians sucked-persians got discipline and look like europeans, not a rabble made of Berbers

That's true. If you think about it, the Persians in Alexander should have looked more like the Greek and the Greek more like the Persians. I mean, come on... Alexander as a pale, blond guy. Doesn't really look convincing.
I think the best parts of Alexander were the battle at Gaugamela, Val Kilmer as King Philipp (Kilmer is one of the greatest actors around, shame he doesn't get many good roles...) and one bacchanal scene where Alexander is posing as Herakles (with a lion's head etc.) and drinking large quantities of wine. He drinks from this bowl of some sort and in the shot his face is covered by that bowl and you only see the lion's head on his head, so it looks like a lion would drink. That scene was absolutly fantastic with that symbolism of Alexander becoming an animal in his alcoholism. Another good thing was Angelina Jolie in her toga (or whatever you might call that dress), she's just pure sex. Although her strange accent and the fact that she's supposed to be Colin Farrell's mother but is only 2 or 3 years older than him was a bit silly.
Apart from those three and a half things there wasn't really anything good in Alexander in my opinion. I especially dislike the huge leap from young Alexander directly to the battle of Gaugamela. I was totally confused by that. That's not cool fast-cut cinema that's just plain bad filmmaking.

One Alexander movie I liked was the one from the 50s with Richard Burton I think. The battle scenes were a bit silly from a historical point of view (as in most historical movies from that time) but the plot and the characters were far more intriguing and better developed than in Alexander.


Someone mentioned "Alatriste". Great historical movie, although not a warfare movie per se. The fencing scenes are absolutly awesome. Very stylish and quite accurate at the same time. Great dialogue too. The plot can be a bit confusing at times because sometimes it gets a bit difficult to keep all those different characters apart. But great movie nonetheless.