Pretty good

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2004)

Overall, it was very enjoyable. Not outstanding, but not terrible.
Costumes/Sets: Great. Malta is beautiful, and the costumes were superbly detailed, which you'd expect from a high-budget film like this.
Battle scenes: Also great. There was enough large-scale fighting going on to impress you with the effects, and enough one-on-one to make it interesting.
Acting: Shall we spent a moment on Brad Pitt? Okay, so he basically has two facial expressions throughout the movie: brooding or p***ed. But when you take it in perspective, the script doesn't leave him a whole lot of room for anything else. I didn't think he was too terrible, considering. I did actually care about the characters, so I suppose that's worth something. Eric Bana really stood out as Hector, and Sean Bean made a great Odysseus even with his limited screen time. Orlando Bloom, well, he made a believable Paris, but something tells me that it was more due to typecasting than good acting.
Dialogue: Really, really dorky. I think this is definitely the weakest point of the movie, which I cannot understand considering the writers had a whole book full of inspiration from the father of Western literature sitting right in front of them.
Faithfulness to The Iliad: Not much. Don't go in expecting to see a film adaptation of The Iliad; you will be disappointed. It's definitely Hollywood-ized, and doesn't count on having a sequel. Some of the characters that show up in Homer's Odyssey are killed off in Troy; some that die in the Iliad survive in Troy. As it says at the end of the movie, it was "Inspired by Homer's Iliad," and that's where the similarities end. Think of it as a new tale about the fall of Troy.
In conclusion, I would give it a "pretty good". This could have been done a lot worse, and I think they gave it a good effort. It's at least worth spending the money to decide for yourself whether you like it or not (and it's way better than seeing 13 Going On 30 or Van Helsing).