Ancient Greece? No, but here's the sexy playstation version

Rating: 7/10 (24 May 2004)

Thank goodness movies are fiction. This idea works well for much of the American film industry  after all events outside of the U.S. are either Not Important or Never Really Happened. Add big battles, sex, special effects and a notional wave at reality and you can find the downpayment on a few more Roads to Glory.
This approach to film making can be justified in that it can raise the spirits of the masses. Not just in the U.S.  Bollywood, for instance, puts a smile on the faces of millions of Indians living in poverty. Back in the U.S. of A., it rallied spirit of troops for WWII and gave hope to the worried families back home that there was hope somewhere Over the Rainbow.
For today's fattened (if artistically impoverished) viewers, movies such as Troy feel like a too-good-to-miss extra large helping of Death by Chocolate when we're already too sated to move. We already know the sensorama ingredients give nothing of value to us but they're nice anyway. Brad Pitt's immaculately oiled body is nearly every woman's fantasy hero as the valiant, sensitive, warrior-supremo Archilles. Orlando Bloom is Paris, tender but useless, adorable (if morally bankrupt) and with a make-love-not-war brigade expression (ie don't fight wars, you big pussy, just cause them by stupid, hedonistic indifference.) His love' of (dumb blonde) Helen is the nominal excuse for the war that launches a thousand ships and results in the sacking of Troy when she is swept off her feet by Trojan Paris from her nasty Greek husband. Helen, after a few nothing-to-do-with-me moral disclaimers, becomes the role model fro every female that aspires to an over-inflated ego.
The credits mention the story is related to Homer's Iliad, but apart from name dropping and iconised events from general mythology such as the Wooden Horse, there is little of Homer's genius or subtlety, just as there is little that is identifiably Greek. There are many American and British actors prancing about with swords and overblown histrionics, making little or no attempt to disguise their accents, mannerisms or the fact that they are film stars. Within these parameters however, there are some enjoyable performances, particularly Peter O'Toole as the worthy King Priam, struggling to do the right thing for both his subjects and his offspring, and whom Achilles respects more than his own power-hungry king.

Excellent use of computer generated graphics means we can have convincingly enormous armies in epic battle scenes, and the pacing a story are sufficiently well constructed to entertain us for nearly three hours.

For anyone who found Lord of the Rings too fantasy-laden or Gladiator too bloody, Troy may well be the ideal Saturday afternoon family entertainment. Nothing wrong with a bit of harmless fiction after all . . .