A great epic - what they all should be like!

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2006)

Troy used to be my favourite film, but Saving Private Ryan has beaten it out for the title. (This is quite a coincidence - if you look on IMDb's top grossing worldwide films chart - you will see that SPR is the film below Troy - which just goes to show that this film was no epic disaster.) This film is what all epics should be - enjoyable, with characters that you can remember, epic battle sequences and settings and set in a historical background. This film was better than Gladiator in my opinion - and I strongly feel that it should have won the Oscar for Best Costume Design. Anyway, enough of this banter...
Troy is without a doubt splendid to look at - the settings certainly cost a few bob, and recapture the age of the Ancient Greeks with honor and pride. The film is stunningly directed - another plus to Wolfgang Petersen's career - and with a famous cast and great cinematography. The costumes are well and truly great, and thoroughly deserving of the Oscar nomination. Though Brad Pitt's acting is a bit wooden, everything else about the acting is good. There is really lots of chemistry between the characters who love each other. The screenplay is also a spiffing job well done. So what exactly did make me go off this film, I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you the truth.
To be honest, I hate romance films/films about love, and whichever way you look at Troy, it's still a film about love. Before the beautifully done battle sequences, some of the soppiest one liners of the past decade are delivered by Orlando Bloom and Helen of Troy, and the film starts to get a bit boring. The fact that this film is not meant to be fully based on the Iliad (it was only inspired by it) is no problem to me, but at the very start of the film, Wolfgang Petersen and co. had the two armies marching towards each other, and could have given us a huge battle to kick the film off with, instead of one rather disappointing death by Achilles. But there is nothing badly done about this film, and to be honest, it is a film that all epics should aspire to. Despite the disappointing one-disc release (which I bought), the two-disc release is full of great features - I suggest you buy that instead.
Troy is a great film - watch it if you get the chance! A stunning job! 10/10