Good solid movie. Go see it!

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2004)

I've seen a lot of criticism of this movie and even the group of people I went to see it with weren't taken back and all said the same thing 'its okay.' I on the other hand thought it was a good movie overall and give it a 7.5 / 10. So do yourself a favor and go see it on the big screen and make up your own mind as it's certainly not a waste. As far as the movie length it didn't feel too long to me and I thought the CGI wasn't all that noticeable (my two big worries going into it). However after recently reading an article on how it cost 200 million to make the movie and that a decent portion of it went into digitally enhancing brad pits muscles as well as cover up his bald spot, heh. Makes you wonder about the longevity of real actors Could a day come when a digital Brad Pitt could replace the real one?
Anyway, I grew up with Greek mythology and was always fond of it. Being quite rusty though I went into this saying 'Isn't this the one with the wooden horse' but actually I did remember a little more than that prior to seeing it. So unfortunately I knew what was gonna happen in the Hector / Achilles fight, I knew how Achilles was going down, and how the main battle would end. So there wasn't much suspense in my corner for how things were going to play out.
All that being said, I enjoyed the movie. I saw it after downing 4 long islands, so I was a bit sauced up, but I don't think that skewed my perception of the movie one way or the other. I thought that the flow, acting, battle sequences, and digital effects were all done nicely. As far as the story, I did notice that while the characters talked about the gods quite frequently, the directors more or less left the gods (or there actions) out. I guess with this kind of movie, you either have to go one way or another. But in the stories, I remember the gods playing a more active role. There were other subtleties in the movie that if you new the relevance, it would mean different things. For example, the Greeks killing the priests of the temple and p***ing off the gods (was present, but not very prominent in the movie). Nothing was ever really said of Achilles immortal body / mortal heal. He was just kind of depicted as a bad-ass warrior with no fear. So the end scene with Paris and Achilles, they stayed true with the arrow in the heal, but to an ignorant viewer, they wouldn't have noticed the relevance of it being the fatal arrow. Also, I thought I remember there being some special protective significance of the necklace given to Achilles by his mother, so when he gave it away to the slave girl
Having said it was a good movie, I did have a few complains / ideas that the movie could have done better on. From a movie perspective, they did kind of drop the ball on the whole Paris / Helen relationship which only was covered in the first few minutes of the movie. It would have been nice at least from a movie perspective to see something more develop here (struggling love develops in the midst of imminent death). I would have liked to see little more character development of Odysseus, he was a supporting character in the movie, but needed a little more stage time in my opinion as he was a fairly important character. Also Paris (Orlando bloom) didn't get much stage time at all, other than a few crucial scenes, though I don't remember how important he was in the stories. The movie pretty much boiled down to Achilles vs Hector, which is no bad thing. Only other complaint from me was on the music. In my opinion music can totally make or break a movie, much more so than people give credit to. In Troy, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the music was bad, it just seemed like in many scenes the music didn't capture the essence, and hence didn't really bring huge life or power to some scenes. Probably the biggest flaw for me
Favorite scene  Very first duel with Achilles, beginning of the movie. Favorite character  Hector / Achilles being a close second
Final remarks  As I said earlier, go see it. Though I've heard some mixed results, I haven't heard anyone say it was bad. See it if you are into epic battle movies or history or Greek mythology. See it if you like Brad Pitt as he's never looked better (digitally or not). Final thought, I think if the LOTR trilogy hadn't come out, this movie might have had a bit more impact. Problem is how do you shine next to that masterpiece.