Troy
Cast: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Diane Kruger, Siri Svegler, Sean Bean, and Peter O’Toole
Director: Wolfgang Peterson
Writer(s): Homer (poem) & David Benioff (screenplay)
Country: USA
Length: 163 min
MPAA: Rated R for graphic violence and some sexuality/nudity
Released: 2004
movieforums.com rating: C+
I knew I was in for a real treat when the audience, during the first ten minutes of the new mega-blockbuster epic
Troy, began chuckling at the humorous dialogue between King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) and the King of the last rival Greek Statehood. Of course they were chatting about the legendary, and damn near super human Achilles (Brad Pitt), and how he could win the war by fighting the opposing army’s greatest fighter. It was also kind of funny how thousands of computer generated men had to wait around because Achilles was too busy sleeping with two, yes that’s right, two, beautiful women, in order trouble himself with the pesky battle at hand. God, I love epics. Except, as I found out, the epic is dead. Whether you liked
Braveheart or not, it is arguably the last authentic epic ever made.
Troy is the story of how the Greeks decided to invade the Trojan Empire and what happened because of that decision. We all know about the Trojan Horse and Helen, but this movie is not really about them. This is the story of Achilles, and on a lesser note, Hector, though it does make sure we get the back story. If you’re not to knowledgeable on the subject, here’s a refresher course.
Greece was once a country with many kingdoms until King Agamemnon and his brother King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) decided to unify the country under one ruler, which is of course Agamemnon. After that’s accomplished, Menelaus holds a ceremony where the two princes of Troy attend in order to establish peace between the two great nations. The princes’ are Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). Unfortunately for the citizens of Troy, Paris has an affair with Helen (Diane Kruger) and they fall in love. When the princes’ leave Greece to return home, Paris sneaks Helen aboard Hectors ship so they can live happily ever after. Too bad Helen is King Menelaus’ wife, and he has a short fuse. Menelaus runs to his brother and begs that they go to war so he can have his vengeance. King Agamemnon thinks that’s a splendid idea because he hates the fact that there is a neighboring country that isn’t under his leadership. Oh yeah, and because of his brother too. Three days later, they send 1,000 computer generated ships across a computer generated ocean to wage war against a computer generated city and army. God, I love epics.
Okay, that’s enough about Helen, actually, it really is. She’s more or less relegated to eye candy duty for the rest of the flick, except of course, when Brad Pitt isn’t showing his bum for the ladies who’re sick of the battle scenes. Like I said earlier, the bulk of the movie is about Achilles. Now, I like Brad Pitt a lot. Most of his movies I’ve paid good money to see in the theaters, but I realized something while watching Troy; I like him a whole lot better when he’s playing a psychotic character.
12 Monkeys, awesome.
Snatch, excellent.
Kalifornia, stupendous!
Troy, ZZZzzz… He’s boring. Very boring. I found myself frustrated that I was liking Eric Bana more than Pitt. I haven’t really seen Bana do anything significant in the past, but here he is, outshining the guy who gets to sleep with Jennifer Aniston. God, I love epics…no, wait…I mean…God, I hate Brad Pitt.
My biggest complaint about this film isn’t the fact that it’s more of an action/drama than epic, it isn’t even the fact that most of the actors were acting either like hams or like comatose patients from Bellevue, or even that I hate the downfall of the epic because of the cheaper CGI (though that does get a major harrumph from me), or that the music is utterly forgettable instead of being majestic like epic music should be, it’s that for the entire length of the movie…I didn’t feel a damn thing at all! I could care less about anybody, well…besides Hector a little tiny bit. A movie that is supposed to be an epic should deliver these three things at the very least:
a) Tons of extra’s
b) Sweeping cinematography
c) An emotional punch
Troy managed to deliver only one of those things, and most of that is because they have powerful computers. All but three central character’s within the film had crying scenes or speeches that were supposed to invoke emotions. None of them phased me, or the audience I watched this with. There was actually a scene where Achilles’ breaks down and I could hear laughter throughout the theater. Personally, I didn’t feel like laughing because I was concentrating on a meatloaf recipe I wanted to try out. God, I love epics.
Now I know that it sounds like I hated the movie, but that isn’t entirely true. I just didn’t love it. It had its moments, like when Achilles and Hector have their duel, and when Helen showed her lovely fanny, and it’s always a pleasure to see O’Toole and Sean Bean play decent roles, but the good was outweighed by the mediocre and bad too often. Another thing that pleasantly surprised me was the minor role
given to Nigel Terry, who some of you may remember as King Arthur in
Excalibur. Overall, the humdrum acting, the massive CGI, and the weak attempts at humor early on, distracted me too much and too often. It’s going to be a sad reign for the Hollywood epic from now on, because it used to be that a script had to be exceptional in order to warrant the prohibitive costs involved in making them. Now, all you need is an adequate script and a budget large enough to hire a group of computer experts. It’s really not the same thing. God, I miss the epics.
