if it's the Iliad then it wouldn't be titled Troy.

Rating: 7/10 (28 August 2004)

i wanted very much to watch Troy since i watched the trailer. in fact i don't know the complete story about the Trojan War. As i heard from many comments that Troy was narrated from Homer's Iliad so i purchased an electronic version of the Iliad and spent almost 10 days reading it.
at last i went to watch Troy with some friends. I was amazed, this is nothing the Iliad. what's the problem with some people and some critics, this isn't the Iliad, this is the Trojan War so we can't fail a movie just for not matching the original text.
in my viewpoint, the movie was about the Trojan War and the Iliad was the only written text available so the makers of Troy used the Iliad as their original raw material. we all know that the Iliad started with the tenth and last year of Troy besiege and finished with the death of Hector but the movie goes far beyond.
i admire the talent of Wolfgang Petersen, he made a movie, another version of the wellknown Iliad. Maybe Homer created the Iliad from nothing and Petersen created his own version, who knows?. In fact this movie deserves the money spent on it because without its special effects it would be nothing. Some say that it was easier for Petersen to make the movie this way, i mean giving up all the Gods, the events we didn't see in the movie but i say that it was very much harder for him to change it into this form. In fact it was more convincing, i mean who cares about Gods and myths in such a movie. many people would love Troy just for being Troy even if they know nothing about the original story.
there were some scenes that really were familiar, others needed some explanation. for example the scene when Odysseus is accompanied by some warriors to ask Achilles to participate in the war, doesn't it remind you of "Mission Impossible 2". one other scene, when Achilles is holding Briseis after the fall of Troy and Paris launches his arrow into Achilles' heel, he seems to lose power and die. many friends of mine were amazed by that. Does a hero like Achilles die because of an arrow in the heel, they needed some explanation from the Iliad to accept it, maybe through the movie someone had to mention that Achilles was invulnerable to wounds through out his body except his heel.
any way the movie is a master piece of Wolfgang Petersen who saved it in many twists especially that the dialogue was so naive. consider watching it muted, that will change nothing.
while Brad Pitt and Eric Bana were a real heroes, Diane Kruger and Orlando Bloom did nothing just looking very naive and silly, they never looked in love.
Troy will never meet your expectations whether high or low. It has both...