Not perfect, but great enough to be truly epic

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2004)

This movie is an epic adaptation of the ancient poem "The Iliad" by Homer. The producers changed the story about a bit (eg. the relationships of the characters) and changed the time span of the war from 10 years to a mere 16 days or so. But the end result is a fabulous movie to watch. Although the special effects are not really what I consider "one of the world's greatest", the camera direction is one of the best I have seen and the sound effect is entrancing. Wolfgang Petersen has carved himself a real reputation from directing this movie.
I will not call the overall sets and costumes colorful, as they are all mostly earth-tone colors. But they do fit in very well with the movie. The costume designs are really not bad. The costumes for the Greeks are plain, simple, nothing we have not seen before. But the costumes for the Trojans are something. Very original. Something different from the other ancient Greek or that type of genre movies.
Let us not forget the cast. I have watched many movies, and of all I will have to say that TROY has the best cast of all. The actors ARE the characters the play. I highly doubt that another set of cast would be able to bring these legendary characters to life like Brad Pitt and gang did.
The war scenes and combat are extremely well choreographed, some of the best I have seen in fact. I would rival the first war scene from TROY with the one in LOTR 3. In comparison, TROY's war scene special effects are better that LOTR's. TROY is definitely a movie worth watching again and again. So buy the DVD. I highly recommend this movie. I highly doubt that there will be another movie coming soon which will be able to match the scale and grandeur of TROY.