Exciting addition to sword and sandal genre

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2004)

Essentially cinema is story-telling in modern guise and one of the oldest and greatest stories of humankind is Homer's work "The Iliad" which "inspires" this movie by German director Wolfgang Petersen who first came to our attention with a very different film about war "Das Boot". The story is much conflated and twisted and Achilles' heel barely figures. Homer would have been unimpressed at the many liberties taken with his classic work and all of us have to suffer a rather dire script and some indifferent acting (except for veteran Peter O'Toole as the aged King Priam) and a strange mixture of American, English, Scottish, Australian and other accents.
However, at the heart of any story of war are the warriors and the battles and here "Troy" delivers in some style. Brad Pitt as the running, throwing, sword-wheeling Achilles and Eric Bana as a brave and competent Hector are physically in good shape and their exciting fight sequence is one of the highlights of this 2 hour 43 minute work. Achilles is presented as a very modern hero, arrogant, full of angst, and no respecter of authority.

The battle sequences themselves rival those of "Lord Of The Rings" for the stunning use of special effects and the depiction of visceral violence. Indeed Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean seem to have stepped straight out of "LOTR" into "Troy", although the few actresses in the movie are generally newcomers, notably former model Diane Kruger as Helen whose beautiful face launches a thousand ships (most of which we see, thanks to the wonders of CGI).
"Troy" apparently cost some $185M to make, with filming in Malta and Mexico as well at the studios in Shepperton. It was "Gladiator" which revived the sword and sandal saga, but "Troy" is not in the same class as that superlative movie. However, if the Hollywood wizards can set up "Alien vs Predator", maybe they could conjure up "Maximus vs Achilles" - or perhaps fans of this genre should just wait for "Alexander The Great" and "Boudacca".