3 out of 10 stars and why

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2004)

in truth, i didn't expect much from "troy" but i thought that at least it would be a good swords-and-sandals action flick and for that i would pay seven bucks. what i didn't anticipate is brad pitt (who i usually like quite a bit) taking a page out of the keanu reeves acting handbook in order to portray achilles. pitt is just a tip of the usually-good-but-somehow-terrible-acting iceberg that we call "troy." brian cox, one of my fave thespians, is even sickeningly over and under-acting his way to a razzie. the even spread of bad acting in this movie i can only blame on the direction--another watershed of garbage in this movie. petersen has decided that "troy" is going to essentially be a montage of over-long, overly-dramatic close up shots of his actors trying to muster up an expression. even the pretty faces of pitt, saffron burrows, eric bana, bloom, and "helen" (to name the prettiest) look ridiculous with these pointless shots and it really lends to the bad acting. i kind of want to tell wolfgang petersen, "it's OK if you couldn't find actors who can act but if you linger on their expressionless faces, the secret will be out." it's as if it is a director's choice to prove that his actors have forgotten what they learned in acting class (which is a shame, this is usually a good lot).
i knew this movie wouldn't be a faithful retelling of the Trojan war, either from the "illiad" or as petersen claims, from other sources. still, i expected a little more. it seems like the entire three hours movie was built around the scene of achilles and hector's fight which, mind you, is the best ten minutes of the entire movie. even the score, which is horrifyingly bad and unfitting during the rest of "troy," matched the action. truly, the scene had the best choreography of the fight sequences in the movie.
there is no question that this movie boasts some of the worst writing i've seen in a movie since, well, "van helsing" which really will compete for the worst writing i've ever heard in a movie. with a budget of 150 mil which i'm sure they went over, you think they could at least revise the script. forget the close-to-the-text interp. of the "illiad," let's just work with the story they conjured up. the cinematography in this movie is kindergarden. it is pathetically over-indulgent and wasteful really. it pains me to even think that there really was a cinematographer because it seems as though he/she was absent on filming days. it's like the producers said, "let's forget ab out the writers and cinematographer, instead let's give pitt a bigger paycheck." (undeserved in my opinion)
so many things are wrong with this movie that it would be impossible to write about this anymore. the audience snickered throughout the entire thing and yet they mostly walked out talking about how amazing the movie was. they are wrong and Hollywood is wrong for making audiences think that this is what good film-making is. no, good film-making is just that. this is a poor excuse for a blockbuster. forget "braveheart," "gladiator," "ben hur," and "the matrix," this movie falls flatter than debra messing. really, don't waste your money and if you do--try to stare at brad pitt as much as you can because that's the best that "troy" has to offer. and don't pay attention to the music either, it's a bore. 3/10*