Dec 7: Troy

“An adaptation of Homer’s great epic, the film follows the assault on Troy by the united Greek forces and chronicles the fates of the men involved.”
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen, Rated: R, 163 minutes

Back in March, I reviewed the Greek mythology-based epic, Immortals. In my review, I talked about how Greek myth has never really made a great transition to film and I could never understand why. Rich with everything you could ask for in a story, the myths are a writer’s gold mine and have the cinematic grandeur one would assume is needed for a glorious movie. With Troy, a film based in both history and myth, we’re given a whole lot of action with very little mystique or wonder you’d expect from a Homer adaptation. While I can’t say it completely misses the mark, as the Illiad, on which the movie is based, is really more of such action than anything else, but it’s still an incredibly flawed flick that could have been much greater.

But we have Brad Pitt’s muscles you say?

Troy is a city believed to be impossible to breach or destroy. The great King Priam (Peter O’Toole) resides in its walls with his two sons, Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). The young and naive Paris falls in love with the most gorgeous woman in all of the land, Helen (Diane Kruger), who just so happens to be married to King Agamemnon (Brian Cox), a militant leader who desires power and land like no other. After Helen decides to leave the King and make her self cozy in Troy with Paris, Agamemnon uses it as an excuse to go to war, and he gathers his Greek forces to storm the gates of Troy. Along his side is the fierce, seemingly-immortal warrior, Achilles (Brad Pitt) and the mastermind genius, Odysseus (Sean Bean). Thus, a war rages on (over a woman) and we’re left to decide who we should root for, even if we know how it all plays out.

Go away, Legolas! Wrong movie.

Troy suffers from the fact that he doesn’t really have a defined hero for you to stand behind. Achilles is thrown at us as the manly warrior/Brad Pitt look-alike but when you learn more about his character, you realize he’s just a total dick in a suit of armor. He’s incredibly hard to get behind and even Pitt can’t turn him into someone likable. He’s brash and a piss-poor leader when it comes to fighting a war. The closest figure we get to a hero is the ill-fated Hector, who we’re only given moments to love, and his little brother who’s madly in love, is more of a pussy than a man. Greek mythos is always full of heroes, and the Illiad has plenty you can focus on, but Troy does an awful job at bringing that to film. We’re left with a grab-bag of “good guys” that are just too hard to support, and that lack of focus really throws the movie off course.

Too bad he’s a total bag of cocks.

I’m a die-hard fan of Greek mythology and still eagerly anticipate a movie that does the stories and the gods justice. While Troy only mentions the gods (it never shows them because that’s too “magical” for Hollywood), it would have been much better with some Ares and Athena interruption. The movie is also almost as long as the epic poem, checking in at a staggering 163 minutes. Sure, the action sequences look pretty cool and the overall scale of the film is impressive, but alas, a sword-fight or two cannot turn a bad script and even worse characters into something worthwhile. Troy is admirable in its attempt to give us a grand scale battle post-Lord of the Rings, but one like myself, who’s a big fan of the source material, can only sit and watch in utter disappointment. In the mean time, I’ll be sitting around patiently for a worthwhile adaptation of The Odyssey and maybe even start writing down my own ideas for a worthy transition to screen.

The Good:
good fight sequences with an especially worthwhile sword-fight duel in the middle of it all
The Bad:
a film based on a story of heroes that completely lacks in one worth our time or energy
The Ugly:
a complete absence of any Greek gods and the brushing-aside of the mythology on which the story is based

Overall: 5.8/10

Discussion Question:
What myths are you dying to see make it to the screen?