Bad film, overall.

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2005)

I admit, I never read the whole Illiad. It is one of those great stories few filmmaker dare to make into a movie. You have a horde of characters, ten years of horrible war, twists and turn with every phrase. So Wolfgang Petersen, a once great director, decided to rewrite the story. it is the story of how the the gods play with man and how man's own hubris is bringing him down (the motto of all Greek tragedies), but rather how man cause his own downfall. This is fine, you take the gods out and some of the characters, but why doing it so poorly? why the plot so weak, the greatest war in its time and it is fought out in 3-4 days? How come the Trojans fall for the horse trick? The reasons given do not hold any water. The battle scenes are unrealistic, this is not LOTR and not Braveheart of Henry V. The Greeks rarely used archers in large scale and only used short bows! The first battle scene is an ancient times Private Ryan's Omaha beach scene remake - stupid. The fighting scene between Achilles and Hector looks bad, I don't know how the ancient Greek fought, but it was surely never done that way. Why casting Orlando Bloom as Paris. Sure Mr. Bloom is a pretty face and brings people to the cinema, but he has no charisma. Brad Pitt is also a very bad, two dimensional Achilles, I can't see him leading Greece most fearsome soldiers into combat. Even Peter O'Toole can't save the poor cast. I give it 5/10 out of pure pity (should have been 3/10)