In the 4th century B.C. lived a Macedonian king, Alexander (Colin Farrell). Despite no evident intelligence, a complete lack of charisma, and all the authority of a meter maid, he extended his empire to the limits of the known world. He conquered Egypt, Babylon, and Central Asia, yet his greatest triumph was the conquest of his own dark roots. These he subjugated by the constant application of peroxide, together with a strict conditioning regiment.

As a boy, Alexander learned the proper forms of man-on-man-action from the philosopher Aristotle (Christopher Plummer) and proved his genius by taming wild horses. As a young man, he padded around the palace like a dim-witted kitten, trying desperately to look and act like a man half his real age. Once full grown, he would marry an Oriental princess (Rosario Dawson), develop a god complex, and cultivate an Irish accent.

This, at least, is the Alexander of “Alexander,” a howlingly silly debacle by Oliver Stone.

I approached this film with hope and fear. I hoped Mr. Stone might do for the sword-and-sandal epic what “JFK” did for the docu-drama or “Natural Born Killers” for the crime flick. My hopes were immediately dashed by a credit sequence that shimmied like the unholy union of a screensaver with an Etch-a-Sketch – the looniest mix of ancient glyphs and animal totems this side of “Catwoman.”

Then came Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy, be-togaed on a stone terrace, intoning his history to a long-haired scribe who looked like the lead singer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers: “I, Claudius” meets “The Phantom Menace.” Then came the flashbacks, the deeds of Alexander, the final shattering of my hopes. Aside from some extreme wide-angle kitsch and a single outbreak of psychedelia in the final reel, “Alexander” is flat, functional filmmaking, as formally exciting as “Troy” – and considerably less so than Mel Gibson’s latest take on the sword-and-sandal genre.

As to be expected, there are fancy digital tableaux and soaring mountain vistas. Mr. Stone and his team have spared no expense on orgies, costumes, bric-a-brac, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There is much detail but scant awe, big views but no vision, thousands of props without proper weight.

There are two battles, and they’re both good. A stretch of Moroccan desert hosts the Battle of Gaugamela, in which the vastly outnumbered Macedonians defeat the Persian army through sheer cunning and audacity. Mr. Stone takes a hawk’s-eye view of the field, diagramming the combat with macroscopic clarity. Up close, he narrows in on the contact: soft bodies with sharp things, bodyplates cracking open like lobsters. Spears, swords, and chariot spokes rupturing organs with an awful thwack-squish. Sprays of blood hiss from sliced limbs.

As set pieces go, this crackling audiovisual intensity exceeds genre expectations, as does a climactic battle in the jungles of India (which none too subtly suggest Vietnam). Here Mr. Stone makes good use of my favorite new blockbuster buddy – the pissedoff pachyderm. The battle elephants are especially welcome because, unlike the humans in the movie, they don’t talk in non-stop epigrams and faux-“ancient” syntax.

“Who better than you to speak, most notable of men?” Anyone! Would that Mr. Stone had gone for “Passion” ate “authenticity” and performed his dead screenplay in dead languages. “The East has a way of swallowing men and their dreams!” – as does cliche. “You must never confuse your feelings with your duties!” – nor speechifying with speech. “Fear of death drives all men!” – and fear of plain talk drives all hacks. “Babylon was a far easier mistress to enter than she was to leave!” – thanks for the Iraq subtext, but, uh, so what?

All this was the undoing of my hopes for “Alexander.” My fear had arisen from the idea of Mr. Farrell as Mr. the Great, and I left the movie scared out my wits. This casting bungle may be the most disastrous in recent Hollywood history; it makes the miscalculations of “The Human Stain” look positively inspired. Mr. Farrell plays the teenaged Great as a scrunched up, blinky-face himbo, buried beneath a humiliating quantity of makeup. Later he reminded me of Chris Kattan, Fabio, a malnourished Chow Chow, and the unfortunate love child of Russell Crowe and Charo.

At a minimum, an Alexander should communicate confidence. Mr. Farrell warps this movie into his wimpy vacuum. Does Mr. Stone have a revisionist agenda here? He certainly emphasizes the king’s bisexuality, a frankness more admirable in intent than execution (the less said about Jared Leto’s neutered Hephastion, the better).The director of “Platoon” has one eye on American empire, and seems to be playing the “sensitive” imperialism of the Macedonian off that of a certain Texan unilateralist. This Alexander will be complex, human-scale, anti-epic, fallible.

But there are no strong ideas here, no hard thoughts about power or leadership or civilization and its discontents. It’s amazing how timidly the maker of “Wall Street,” “The Doors,” and “Nixon” imagines the mother of all megalomaniacs. Moreover, Mr. Stone suggests an insipid psychological theory to explain the entire Alexandrian campaign. What drove this man to such Herculean efforts? What accounts for such ferocious ambition, such insatiable drive? Try this: Alexander wanted to get away from his mommy.

This brings us to my choice for Best Supporting Cobra Woman for 2004, Angelina Jolie as Olympias. She’s fantastic in her go-for-broke performance, deliciously poised between camp and conviction. Draped in albino vipers and gurgling in some fabulously arbitrary accent, she brandishes her thighs like deadly scimitars. Between this and her eye-patch wearing blimp pilot in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” Ms. Jolie’s on a dangerous scene-stealing spree. Had Mr. Farrell a single drop of her venomous elan, he might have jolted this soggy “Alexander” to life.