Falls Short of Expectations

Rating: Null/10 (13 September 2004)

This movie had the potential to be so much more than Wolfgang Petersen delivered. It is shocking that the studio was willing to spend $200 million on this ($17.5 million of which went to Brad Pitt) without a proper script and changes to Homer's story that made no sense.
And now for the acting. Brad Pitt is a good actor with the right material and he has played memorable characters in movies like A River Runs Through It, Se7en, Fight Club, Snatch, Kalifornia and Twelve Monkeys (all of them had excellent performances from him). Before the movie came out I rooted for him and Bana over Bloom (who got on my nerves to no end). As an admirer of Pitt, it pains me to say he was completely miscast as Achilles, though the blame lies more with Petersen for putting him in the movie. Plus Achilles had some of the weakest material in the movie and he was also given some of the worst lines. All the changes to his story seem to have been tailored to a Hollywood superstar though this is probably not Brad's fault. And like Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai, he remains too much of a superstar to vanish into his role. Achilles of the film was at his best when he was fighting. I am really surprised as to why Brad did not take the role of Hector, especially since Hector was the the heart of the film.
Which brings me to Eric Bana. Bana was excellent as Hector and might have even played a memorable Achilles (he was Chopper Read after all) had he and Pitt switched characters. He should have been completely boring especially since he was transformed into a saint for the film but Bana did not let that happen. His scenes with his wife were excellent and their relationship was more touching than the supposed love of Helen and Paris and the invented romance of Achilles and Briseis, even though Hector and Andromache got the least screen time. The Achilles-Briseis relationship seemed like an excuse for Benioff to make Achilles as likable as Hector or to give Pitt a romance, seeing as how the Trojan men had plenty (though see below for my thoughts on Paris-Helen). Back to Bana, people thought he would be the worst of the leads and he held the film together instead. It went downhill very fast after Priam reclaimed his body. Funny how the least-publicised have a way of sneaking up and snatching films away from big stars.
As a non-Bloom fan and one who finds the guy over-hyped for his relatively weak acting skills, Orlando Bloom was okay as Paris. However, he had the worst lines and zero chemistry with Diane Kruger. Bloom needs to change his acting style because the breathless speaking voice and overacting eyebrows are irritating/ distracting. In his defence though, he was much better in Troy than in POTC. His scenes with Bana were excellent as he toned down the histrionics and acted. His fight with Menelaus was classic and his fear was palpable, as was the shame he later felt. However, most of his scenes with Helen were terrible. That having been said, he was likable even though he was more sympathetic than Homer's Paris. I could see the change in Paris' character more than I saw it in Achilles and Bloom did a good enough job to make it believable.
Sean Bean was criminally underused and deserved more screen time, as he was also more appealing than Achilles. He also kept the film together with his performance. I hope to God the studio has taken notice of the good reviews this man got and maybe now we'll get the Odyssey with him in the lead.
Peter O'Toole had some funny moments with the reaction shots during the Hector-Achilles fight but he more than made up for it with his appeal to Achilles. Both he and Bana are deserving of Oscar noms.
Brendan Gleeson is amongst my favourite actors and he needed more screen time as well but he was wonderful as always (though it's a shame that he was characterised as such a baddie). Brian Cox was wonderful as a hammy baddie and I got plenty of laughs from the way in which he spat out his lines. I would have loved to see him live and then get his comeuppance in a sequel but thanks to Benioff's script, no such luck.
The women of the film have little to do but Saffron Burrows was heartbreaking as Andromache and it would have been nice to see her and Hector get more screen time. Briseis was great but Rose Byrne seems to have out acted Brad Pitt at every turn. Diane Kruger was nothing special as Helen and thankfully she did not have much to do either.
The one-on-one fight scenes were fantastic and truly innovative but why did the armies look like they had 50 million men on each side (as opposed to 50,000)? The cinematography was fine but Petersen really needed to avoid foreshadowing by focusing so much on certain actors (the 30-second slow-mo shot of Briseis in the beginning made it obvious something would happen to her, especially if one had not read the Iliad). The score was terrible and the studio was wrong to fire Yared.
All in all, this movie should have been better than it was. Bana, Bean and O' Toole brought a lot of depth to the film but they were not the main stars and made do with what screen time they had. Instead of paying Pitt so much, the studio should have made sure that their lead could carry the role. A solid showing from him might have made this film an Oscar contender, hokey dialogue and all. Alas, no such luck.