Brad Pitt, ladies and gentlemen, is FORTY YEARS OLD.

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 2004)

Brad Pitt was miscast, blah blah blah, whatever. Every time Brad Pitt appears in a movie, it seems like there's a whole hoard of movie reviewers and critics who frantically scramble to their keyboards, desperate to be the first person to claim that he was miscast. YAWN. Yes, there are scenes that Pitt's iconography prevented from being as effective as they should have been. One of the more dramatic scenes in the movie, for example, is when Hector's (Eric Bana) cousin, Briseis, is speaking to Achilles just after he has saved her from being beaten and branded and raped by the soldiers of Agamemnon's army. She tells him that she's known men like him her whole life, but Achilles understands that he's different, and responds simply, 'No, you haven't.' This, oddly enough, actually works better here in writing than it does in Pitt's delivery, but it hardly means he was miscast. Maybe if he hadn't been chewing while he spoke, the line would have been more effective.
As always, I find it pretty interesting to chronicle roughly how closely the movie adheres to its literary source, although in this case it's at least as interesting to read about how other people follow this. Some people get pretty offended. I've read critics who were offended by the chronology (in Homer's The Iliad, for example, the Greeks do not respond militarily to Paris taking Helen for about a decade), by things that were or were not in the original story (like Achilles' introduction into the movie, where he kills Boagrius), and even by the spelling of certain names (which I won't go into, since the names are ancient, products of a language that is all but dead). Roger Ebert, for example, cites many things that were changed in his review of the movie (which, by the way, was nakedly plagiarized by Michael Savage on his radio show a few days after Ebert published it online).
I roughly take these things into account when analyzing the movie, but I'm certainly more interested in the way the story as a whole is delivered. Being a Hollywood movie, Troy is certainly subject to all of the pitfalls that so often plague big-budget films, and I have a theory that many of these problems are the result of studio executives pulling strings and changing stories in order to obtain a rating that will attract the largest possible audience. The problem is that there are just some movies that should not be compromised in order to avoid an R rating. As you may have noticed, Troy did not escape that fate, and it's a good thing, too. Imagine what Braveheart would have been like had it been softened for a PG-13.
The story is about the revenge of the Greek Menelaus, who is out to seek his revenge and the restoration of his honor by killing Paris, the Trojan who smartly made off with Menelaus' wife while on a peace mission to Greece. Good move, there, Paris. Speaking of which, Orlando Bloom, who delivered spectacular performances in The Lord of the Rings films, overacts his way through the entire movie, even though simple logic should lead you to anticipate all kinds of overacting in a movie like this. I don't know what it was, but there were so many scenes that were almost unwatchable because his acting was so over the top.
Complicating matters is Achilles' cousin Patroclus, who is far more eager for battle than Achilles is, although Achilles' hunger for immortality is unmatched by anyone in the movie. Achilles' entire motivation is to be remembered after his death, not for land or money and certainly not for King Agamemnon, whom he openly detests. In what has to be one of the more striking creative liberties taken from the source material, Achilles is presented as sort of a sulking child at some points, who refuses to fight until he gets an apology even though men are dying by the hundreds. He and his band of loyal fighters wait on the sidelines for the right moment (and reason) to join, while Achilles watches the battle and occasionally mutters tactical advice as though he's watching a football game.
Peter O'Toole, the most experienced and accomplished actor in the film by far, delivers an immensely respectable performance as the Trojan king, with a subtle seriousness and devotion that is surprisingly able to transcend the inherent goofiness of the rest of the movie. Now, when I say inherent goofiness, please don't forget that I loved the movie, it's just that it is based on Greek mythology, which ancient Greeks took very seriously, and at the same time is mixed with such modern things like 'Last night was a mistake' and, of course, Brad Pitt, hollering such things as 'Immortality! Take it! It's YOURS!!' O'Toole's performance, however, is so powerful and effective that it's almost like it belongs in another movie, probably an older movie with a more established level of respect. Consider, for example, the single shot of his face as he looks over the ruins of Troy after it has been penetrated by the Trojan horse. The very composition of that shot (to say nothing of how well O'Toole can act with his facial expressions) seems to have been augmented because it is so powerful. This is a truly great actor.
Eric Bana comes out of his role as The Hulk, a decidedly cartoonish but undeniably entertaining comic book movie, and delivers a stunningly convincing performance as Hector, the older and much wiser brother of the man who started the war, not to mention the heir to the Trojan throne. Michael Cox, who has come a long way since he introduced the movie-going world to Hannibal Lecter back in 1986, also delivers an outstanding performance as King Agamemnon, the only bad guy in the entire movie, and delivers some of the least condescending and most successful comedic one-liners that I've seen in a movie in years ('Peace! PEACE!!').
The movie is very much updated for a modern audience, probably most notably in the dialogue portion, although there are some cases where the original language would have just complicated matters more than is necessary. For a movie with such a lengthy running time, Troy is wildly entertaining, although it's ironic that the fight scene between Achilles and Hector was far more dramatic than the full battle scene with thousands of warriors.
(spoilers) There are moments when the movie trips up, like the scene where Hector kills Patroclus, who has dressed up in Achilles' armor so that he can lead his troops into the battle, which Achilles refuses to fight. This scene takes place in the midst of a massive battle, thousands of men are fighting and killing each other, yet when Patroclus is mortally wounded, everyone stops and gathers around to watch, even getting quiet enough to hear Hector murmur, 'That's enough for one day,' upon learning who he had just killed.
The end of the movie is by far my favorite, when the Trojans find the horse on the beach, and one man yells, 'We should burn it!' What a perfect place this would have been to have one of the soldiers inside the horse call out, 'I think we should bring it inside the city!' Thankfully, the movie takes itself more seriously than that, and while Troy displays more than it's share of scenes and situations that are vulnerable to unusually effective smartass remarks (consider, for example, the scene where Achilles mentions the phrase, 'You will never be more lovely than you are right now.' Well, give it a day or two), it is a tremendously entertaining rendition of a Greek classic. Yes, it departed from the source material more than it should have done were it being made as a documentary, but when it's sharing the cineplexes with such trash as White Chicks and The Chronicles of Riddick (which I haven't seen yet, but I saw Pitch Black and therefore have very low expectations), you can't expect the same story that Homer wrote being translated directly onto the screen. Ancient Greece and our modern global society are simply too different for something like that to work.
But complain all you want about Brad Pitt. Someone always will.