Troy is a courageous attempt at developing Homer's epic tale into the richly human story that it rightfully deserves to be.

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2004)

"The Iliad" is indisputably the greatest epic of classical Greece; the poem, which runs twenty-four books in length, centers on the mythic hero Achilles and the wrath that consumes him in the final days of the siege of Troy.
Popular misconception of Homer's epic embroils it with the deeper conflict between the Olympian gods which sparked the entire ten-year war, and screenwriter David Benioff could have easily bent to mainstream pressure and created a contemporary "Clash of the Titans"-esque film where gods and mortals meet in the mother of all ancient battles.
Instead, he wrote "Troy".
Make no mistake about it -- "Troy" is no "Iliad". While Homer made allusions to the existence of gods in what was meant to be a timeless epic, director Wolfgang Petersen's latest screen offering discards any palpable suggestion of divine intervention. Rather, Benioff opts to tell the story closer to what the historical war actually would have been, in order to better flesh out the vivid human elements resonant in Homer's original that were made dimmer by the presence of over-dramatic embellishments.
Achilles, for instance, never once has his heel accentuated as his one fatal weakness, and the notion of his immortality is portrayed simply as a rumor spreading through the Greek army; at one point, he asserts that he would not be clad in armor were he indeed an immortal. His mother, the sea nymph Thetis, is also but an elderly woman who seems to have an affinity for the sea and prophesizes his future commemoration and doom from his participation in the Trojan War.
Playing the film's fearless hero is thespian Brad Pitt, who takes on the intense challenge of showing Achilles' transformation from stony-faced warrior to one who learns to understand love and sympathy, pulling it off with impeccable grace. His solid performance, however, is hampered greatly by the deficient script; a number of the lines given to him are hackneyed and awkward-sounding. Thankfully, as the movie progresses, these lines gradually decrease in time for Achilles' human emotions to surface.
Heading the army on the opposite side of the towering Trojan walls is prince Hector, in an equally stellar performance by Australian actor Eric Bana. The epitome of honor and responsibility, Hector spends much of his time in the film juggling the positions of prince, eldest son, elder brother, husband and commander. Bana manages a man conflicted by his various duties with remarkable adroitness.
Even Hollywood's "It" boy Orlando Bloom, whose acting in blockbusters such as "Lord of the Rings" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" was considerably lackluster, handles the naïve and timid Paris convincingly, and is especially so in a scene where he cowers, scared and humiliated, at his brother's feet, whimpering for security against rival Menelaus, with whom he is dueling and losing. This streak of theatrical expertise seems to infect the rest of the cast, who portray their characters with as much enthusiasm and skill.
Out of all the elements which pepper the otherwise flawless movie, such as the now-infamous "Lord of the Rings" wide-angle zooming shot of armies clashing, the film's greatest downfall would indubitably have to be its soundtrack. The music, especially in the battle scenes, is repetitive and jarring, serving as a distraction to the audience from fully enjoying the wonder that is "Troy" -- nothing short of a courageous attempt at developing Homer's epic tale into the richly human story that it rightfully deserves to be.