reminiscent of the big-budget epics of the past...for good or ill.

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2004)

"Troy" is the Hollywood story of Homer's Illiad. The film is only inspired by Homer's epic poem, and thus makes several major changes to the source material. Most noticeable is the gods, or the lack thereof. In Homer's book, gods fought the battle alongside men, fighting each other although, unlike their Norse counterparts, none of the them could die. Could gods be put into Troy? Probably, but it would add another hundred million to Wolfgang Petersen's budding epic, which is already costing almost two hundred million dollars.
So the gods aren't in it. Petersen has decided to focus on the people fighting the war instead of the gods watching it. This is both a curse and a blessing, as several characters have removed while others have been changed to suit the Hollywood image. Gone is Cassandra, the Trojan seer who predicted the city's fall.There is a theory among literary critics that Homer, possibly a former soldier (no one knows if Homer ever existed), wrote the powerful Greek warrior Achilles to serve as the antithesis of everything he despised in the military. While Achilles is seen as wrathful in this epic, some of more controversial nature has been removed from the film. When Achilles beheads a statue of Apollo (something that spells doom on most cases anyway), the film makes Achilles out to be making social commentary, not arrogantly showing his meglomanical tendencies, as he was in the poem.
Thankfully, some characters aren't changed. The Trojan Hector, played brilliant by Eric Bana, is what some literary critics believe to represents Homer's ideal soldiers, a respectful veterans who serves his country, loves his wife and pays homage to the gods. This one character focuses the audience's sympathy for the Trojan situation, even though it was Hector's whiney brother Paris who first brought the Spartan queen Helen to Troy in the first place. Orlando Bloom's Paris is another character that wasn't changed too much from the book. A flawed character, Paris doesn't share his brother's affection for the military, choosing to service his country better bedside, with as many women flocking to him. Still, Paris tries to do the right thing, and his duel with Helen's former husband Menelaus, although not performed in the poem, reinforces our notions of Paris' deeply flawed by somewhat likable character. Finally, the other factor that focuses the audience sympathy away from the Greeks is Brian Cox's Agamemnon, Menelaus' brother and chief overlord of the Greek fleet. He brings a darker notion to the war, for while some believe the Trojan war was fought over love, Agamemnon openly admits his invasion of Troy is just another power play. Brian Cox delivers performance that is, as usually, his talent, menacing, comical and playful all at once.
Of course, probably the most notable character in this tragedy is "the face that launched a thousand ship", Helen of Troy. Diane Kruger is certainly beautiful, and her presence adds a sort of old fashion Hollywood starlet mystique to the role. That said, her scenes are few and the romance between her and Paris seems oddly contrived at best. Still, as a beautiful actress, she does succeed in convincing us that her beauty, in a mythical sense, could spark an epic war.
Peter O'Toole is a magnificent joy in this film, playing Priam, the aged king of Troy. Only Eric Bana seems fully capable of standing his ground with this wondrous actor. When Priam mysteriously appears in the tent of Achilles, I suddenly became aware that Brad Pitt, for all his talent, could barely stand beside or against Lawerence of Arabia. Thus, Achilles becomes the sully and stolid warrior in this scene, not because it is called for in the script, but because I am convinced that any emotional outburst from Pitt would be dwarfed in comparison to O'Toole's scene.
The reason the Illiad is such a hard concept to grasp is because ultimately it isn't a story about happy endings. In the original story, only two characters really live to see a brighter day. While the death toll isn't quite that high in the movie (although it is close), thankfully these two characters have roles in the film. The first is something of a footnote to the movie. He only has a cameo, and one line, but Aeneas, survivor of Troy, will go on to found Troy in the Illiad's "spin-off", Virgil's Aenid. The second characters has thankfully large part. Sean Bean (Boromir in "Lord of the Rings) plays the one man Achilles respects: Odysseus. Although his scenes are a bit fewer than others, Bean's Odysseus maintains a consistent role in the film. Odysseus is the clever warrior that solves his quarrels through brains rather than brawn, and we see this through Odysseus' use of rhetoric to mediate and master the roles of Agaemmenon and Achilles. Although a small role compared to Pitt and Cox, Bean seems to have the best lines and the best character in my opinion. His narration, although sparse, provides a comparable book end for the film, at the beginning and end.
Troy is reminiscent of big budget "cast of thousand" epics of Hollywood times' past. Ironically, these types of movies were almost the death of some studios, as their elaborate budgets sometimes flopped at the box office. Troy is a brilliant masterpiece in the Hollywood library, but as far as adaptations go, it could have been better and it could have been a lot worse. The film isn't without its flaws, but its epic direction and brilliant actors gloss over the problems, considerably hacking the three hour movie into a sweeping and sprawling epic that commands both our attention and imagination.
***1/2