Mediocre, heterosexistic

Rating: 4/10 (20 May 2004)

Basically this is "Legends of the Fall" meetings Homers epic poem "Iliad". Brad Pitt plays the same childish and arrogant jerk he did in "Legends" (and a lot of other movies) and again shows that his acting talents are obviously limited to that single part. His attempts at looking younger in fact make him look older. It's also very funny to see him posing for the camera all the time - just look at how he always slightly opens his mouth wanting to look sexy. And he has to have some nudie scenes, of course. It's funny to see this behaviour in a man when one is used to this coming from Hollywood actresses.
The other actors are mostly decent although the script blocks any attempts of serious acting. There are some good lines, though. Hector has some of them talking about the war and I considered Helena's remark that she doesn't want a hero anyway to be really good. Not the usual Hollywood macho talk! The acting of Krüger (Helena) is possibly the worst of the movie, though. She delivers each of her lines as if she acts in a cheap soap opera. But I guess they could get her cheap. Patroclus comes across as an annoying beardless brat. Julie Christie appears in the credits, I wonder what she is doing in a movie like this and why I didn't spot her. Was she Achilles' mother? The actress playing Hector's wife is great, she should have played Helena. She possesses an unusual beauty (something rare in Hollywood) and an unique appearance. The actor playing Lysander was very interesting. It's a really small part but his looks were interesting and he seems to be talented.
The direction is rather uneven. Some scenes are shot in a really good, classical way and some are done in that atrocious MTV style. The great score by Yared has also been replaced by a more or less mediocre score by Horner - I guess Horner's score was just louder and they wanted really loud music. This post production meddling really hurt the movie.
The way they changed Homer's poem is rather questionable, too. Why did they change Patroclus from being the hero's lover to his cousin? That's even more strange considering that Achilles and Patroclus act like to (ideal) male lovers in the movie, anyway. During the movie you start to wonder whether "cousin" is a code word for "gay male lover". In connection with the amount of remarks in the movie that every man has a wife and has to have a wife and so on coming from the Greeks I think this movie is unreasonably heterosexistic.
The ending is rather funny. Brad Pitt/Achilles, the king of romance, may of course not die covered with blood or dirt. No, he has to be kept clean and the ending worships his character as the best hero and so on. I think this overdone hero worshipping came across as childish. Besides, who would know about him if Homer didn't write that poem? Why does the script not include Homer? They could have included him at the ending writing the poem or something like that. But the script has some good tendencies, too. It *is* war-critical and that's really great considering this movie is from Hollywood, USA. So, this movie has some good aspects but a lot of bad aspects, too. Wait for it coming out as rental video.