Movie Review: Troy

Troy

I've never read Homer's epic poem "The Iliad" in its entirety. I suspect most of us haven't. But almost all of us are familiar with the story it tells, and the writers behind the latest movie version valued Homer's contribution so much they gave a man millennia dead a writing credit (I found in "The Iliad" some bits and pieces directly transferred to the big screen). To give the writers - and all of the rest responsible for Troy - credit, they put forth a good effort. But the combination of a story too big to tell in a mere couple of hours ("The Iliad" is called "epic" for a reason), as well as a bit of miscasting here and a mediocre performance there, made it clear that this version of the tale will be long forgotten while Homer's works are still read by someone somewhere. In fact, Troy will probably not be much in anybody's thoughts past mid-summer.

Troy offers the latest interpretation of the story of a handsome prince - Paris of Troy (Orlando Bloom) - who falls in love with the beautiful Helen (Diane Kruger). Unfortunately, Helen is already the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta (Brendan Gleeson). Heedless of the danger, the two flee together and make their way back to Troy, along with Paris' disapproving older brother and the heir to the Trojan throne, Prince Hector (Eric Bana). On their arrival back in Troy, King Priam (Peter O'Toole) welcomes his sons, and even reaches out to Helen despite knowing what her being there will mean. It is, he tells Paris with a sigh, the will of the gods that he should have fallen in love with, and then taken the Queen of Sparta to be his own.

But King Menelaus has no intention of letting the gods handle things. He goes to his brother, the great King Agamemnon (Brian Cox), and asks for help waging a war against Troy. Agamemnon, who has largely conquered and united all of the lesser kings of Greece, agrees readily. He likes nothing better than a fight unless it's the power that still more conquered territory will brign him. Even though he has no respect for Agamemnon, the great warrior Achilles (Brad Pitt) also enjoys a good dustup and so he sometimes fights with Agamemnon's army. Because he thinks that Troy will be the greatest battle of all time and that it will thus ensure immortality for his name, Achilles agrees to go to Troy along with some 50,000 soldiers led by their various kings. Achilles' mother, Thetis (Julie Christie), warns her son that if he goes to Troy he'll not return. But Achilles is determined, and along with his young cousin Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund) who he's been training, he takes his followers known as the Myrmidons, and boards a ship for Troy.

Hector is resigned to the war though he still doesn't like it. Once the Greeks have landed on shore near Troy, and even as Paris resolves to fight for love, Hector never-the-less puts on his armor to fight for Troy. Meanwhile, Agamemnon cares nothing for his brother's loss or his brother's wife, and wants only to conquer Troy. But he'll have to somehow control the uncontrollable Achilles even as he keeps the lesser kings under his heel. As for Achilles, he hates Agamemnon's rapaciousness, but he can't find peace no matter how he strives. It's an irony that, even on the eve of a great battle, he should finally find a little of what he so desires, and that in the heat of battle, it's that that proves more damaging to him than the countless soldiers he's faced.

Troy is brilliantly filmed. The sets are astounding, the costuming incredible, and the computer generated images defy description. Even the Lord of the Rings movies (reviews of LOTR Parts II and III are archived in our 2002 and 2003 files), as astounding as they were, had a few CGI flaws here and there. I'm not sure that Troy had even one. The storyline, of course, had to be severely truncated - in Homer's poem, the war lasted some ten years while in the movie it apparently runs about two weeks. In the original, the gods were overtly involved in the outcome of both smaller and individual fights as well as the overall battle; in the movie, the gods are given acknowledgement but there's apparently no supernatural hanky panky going on to change the direction of any given scene. It's hard to say whether or not some of that judicious story editing really had a negative effect on the movie or not. But what did make a difference was casting, performances, and, to a lesser extent, the script.

Brad Pitt, ostensibly the movie's star, spent some eight months in training to get the body of a man purported to have been born of an immortal. He succeeded. But Pitt - who is actually a very good actor (don't argue unless and until you've seen him in 12 Monkeys) - seems almost wooden here. His fight scenes are brilliant (he and Eric Bana didn't use stunt doubles, and both became highly skilled), but his Achilles outside the heat of battle is wooden and prone to looking blankly when someone is speaking to him. I blame the direction and the script in equal parts for that. Orlando Bloom was terrific in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and in Pirates of the Carribbean. I quite frankly, however, don't buy him as a man a queen would dally with let alone risk everything for. He's young, he's very attractive, but he's still more boy than man, and is portrayed as both somewhat effete and a coward. His acting was all right, but I still believe he was miscast here and that the script did a disservice to the type of character he would more likely have been. Eric Bana was very good as the reluctant Hector, and Peter O'Toole was just wonderful in every moment of the screen time he had. Garrett Hedlund tried much too hard, and it was painfully obvious that he was; the two brother kings were okay when they were angry, but that's about all they ever were. Sean Bean (Odysseus, King of Ithaca), Vincent Regan (Eudorus, second in command under Achilles of the Myrmidons), and Tyler Main (Ajax, leader of the Salamonians) were all just fine in supporting roles, some of which could have been expanded without complaint from me.

Taken as a whole, Troy is both a very well crafted film and something of a disappointment. Set up to be a summer blockbuster, I believe Troy will fall short of that mark and that other movies will shortly take over that title. It's not the story - which is still gripping and emotional after some three thousand years - but the script that causes much of the problem, I think. And when the build-up for a movie is as great as it was for Troy, whatever problems there are will only be magnified.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Troy is rated R for graphic violence and some nudity. The nudity isn't explicit, and the violence isn't too bad, either. Frankly, I wonder that the movie isn't rated PG-13. I would consider it perfectly fine to bring your 12 or 13 year-old to see Troy. And if you're a fan of epic battle scenes, literally flawless CGI work, and historic recreations, you'll enjoy the movie, too. You just won't enjoy it as much as you would have hoped.