The education of Achilles

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2004)

Spoilers
The last thing that Troy represents is a scholarly thesis on ancient history. They might have got almost everything (architecture, costume, armory, ships etc) wrong, maybe some by a couple of hundred years, but who cares so long as they don't have the Roman legions attacking Troy. At least they have got the calculation right, 1,000 ships times say 50 soldiers in each comes up to an army of 50,000. That's doing better than some professional accountants!
After all these years of 'war epic' movies, what more can they bring that will excite us? Well, they've tried, and done well at some places. For example, the first scene, when Achilles asserts himself, is good, in fact very good. The leaping attack borrows a little from kung-fu style fighting, but without making it look ridiculous. The originality is in the lethal strike, straight down the shoulder. It took me a little while to recognize that in order for the tip of a sword to reach the opponent's heart, in addition for the strike to come from the front, the back and the side, it can also come from ABOVE, through the shoulder. If that is not originality, I don't know what is.
The other fighting scenes are well designed, and look respectable. The two big battles do remind me a little bit of some play-off games, one in your turf (Troy's city walls) and one in mine (the beach), a daytime game and a night game too, for variety. The showdown between Achilles and Hector however is a bit one-sided but I don't see how that can be changed, and they've made the best of it.
There is some good acting. The obvious one is of course Peter O'Toole, whose 'education of Achilles' scene (that enemies can respect each other too) shines brighter than anything else in this movie. My personal favorite is Sean Bean. If any actor in LOTR should get an Oscar, it's Bean. In Troy, his job is to make it convincing why Odysseus is Achilles' most respected among all the Greek kings, and that he exactly did.
Finally, they seem to have switched the good guys and the bad guys too but that will only upset people who choose to take this movie SERIOUSLY. Anyway, I don't blame Agamemnon for staring the war. Wasn't Troy well known for its rich oil fields?