A cheap Gladiator rip-off.

Rating: 4/10 (18 May 2004)

Troy is one of those movies that seems like it should be in theaters... but then feels like it shouldn't. Like it's a sort of documentary with little more than stone characters, or a multi-million dollar soap opera.
The very first thing I noticed about Troy was the music. Wow, I have never heard such terrible music in my life. Part of it had some blaring trumpets, which attempted to create a "heroic" feeling, but instead felt extremely corny and made me cringe. The worst part about the music in this movie is an odd, high-pitched wailing woman's voice that seems to pop in every two minutes or so. At one point in the movie I actually got so fed up with it that, right in the middle of the theater, I said out loud, "My God, just SHUT UP." While Gladiator had the same type of music, with the wailing woman's voice, this technique was placed strategically within the movie, and wasn't so interfering. Troy's shoved the movie out of the way, slapped you across the face, and screamed until you couldn't think, feel, see, or hear anything else.
The characters are extremely cliche. We have the bad king--he is evil, of course, and wants more land for himself. Greedy. The usual villain. We have the solo hero, who cares only about his countrymen (and cousin). He is very noble, but also very arrogant. There's the good king--good, but blinded by his own beliefs. A noble gentleman who wants nothing but the best for his people. The good king's son, who believes his father, although having good intentions, is really making some mistakes. Throw in a few more villains, place them in ships heading toward the Trojan empire, and you have Troy.
The battle scenes were quite believable, but it was obvious that they were attempting to beat out Gladiator with some scenes, even resorting to using the same kind of camera movements as Gladiator. But it failed in every attempt, as Gladiator pitted real people and characters in the arena, whereas Troy had a mishmash of simple good guys and bad guys thrown in to fight.
The soap opera comes next. The movie begins simply because the prince of Troy takes one of the kings of Greece's wife back to Troy. The king's older brother, who controls most of Greece, uses this as a means of taking his largest army into Troy to conquer it. Achilles is recruited, he meets a lovely young woman who teaches him new things about life, one guy dies and many are sad, one attempts to avenge his death, and so on and so forth, in an almost endless circle.
Troy really may not have been a bad movie. It just felt really phony, really plastic, or transparent. As if it were almost about to reach the reality of the world, but just couldn't wrap its fingers around tight enough.
My main point in all this? Wait for Troy to come out on DVD. Watch it, and decide for yourself. I won't be watching it again.