You know what they say about empty vessels?

Rating: 1/10 (17 May 2004)

I can't entirely hate this film because Julie Christie was in it.
This film really does deserve the criticism directed at it. Brad Pitt is as wooden as the horse itself. My friend and I were discussing how much difference it would have made if they had swapped him for the David Beckham gladiator in the British Pepsi adverts, they performed roughly the same. The supporting cast are not so bad, well maybe they are but they are not on screen for so long but almost all of the major characters are woefully two-dimensional. This allowed for no atmosphere and a forced sense of drama that you had to prod yourself into staying focused to and thus plodding along to a conclusion. What several people said on here about unbelievable characters is certainly true. It would appear that a few mis-castings took place. Certainly Brad Pitt was, he simply is too 'Hollywood' to carry off an epic role. On the other hand, Eric Bana is competent and Orlando Bloom carries Paris off well enough (even if Helen and Paris have no on screen chemistry) but both contributed to an overall underwhelming feeling. You know this when the first 35 minutes have felt like 2 hours.
The battle scenes are impressive as are all of the sets and infrastructure of the film but again this is nothing that hasn't been done in a bigger and better fashion by LOTR already. The film picks up into the final hour when the horse arrives and the final battle inside of Troy kept me focused and redeemed the previous 90 minutes to some extent.
Then the ending went and blew it all... I have laughed at how people have stated that the film is 'loosely' based on The Iliad. They want to try and have respect for the magnitude and endurance of the tale before being so dismissive. The ending is appalling.
Suprisingly, the eight o'clock showing of this was only about 25% full. It's not the worst film I've ever seen, far from it and I'm not necessarily right but it was a missed opportunity. Size is not everything and from the hype of the past few weeks, empty vessels clearly do make the loudest noise. 3/10.