Gladiator meets The Two Towers

Rating: 5/10 (15 July 2004)

The entire way through this movie I kept thinking about "Gladiator" and "Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers", but unfortunately only in the "why does this movie try to be like those two, and not reach their levels"-sense.
I wasn't too concerned about the historical inaccuracies, because it never claims to be a documentary - and the likes of Disney have been getting away with that sort of thing for years. The problem is, however, that the fight scenes take up most of the time and the focus - and are in my mind just as boring as the LoTR ones after the first 5 minutes.
Where LoTR, and especially Gladiator, stands out is in the dialogue and the portrail of the characters. Troy never reaches that level - and never aims to do either.
There are good performances by the likes of Peter O'Tool and Eric Bana (a frequently posing Brad Pitt is not among them), but we never dig deep enough into their characters, because it is all about big fight scenes.
The movie is still watchable, but do not expect a big epic picture at the level of the aforementioned ones.
I gave it a 5, because I definitely liked the horse when it finally arrived on the scene. It could have reached a 6 or 7 had it been 30-60 minutes shorter (maintaining the director's chosen focus area).