A mixed bag

Rating: 4/10 (17 May 2004)

Big budget epic from Wolfgang Peterson ("The perfect Storm") that translates the Greek tale of the Trojan War into a Hollywood Action film. And the battles are in fact, terrific. Some great fight scenes make the film really kick at times... which is good cause when the fighting stops and the dialogue creeps in.. things go mediocre pretty fast. Brad Pitt plays Achilles, but he seems to be channeling Fabio in his performance.. all preening and posing.. with the most leaden line reads in the whole cast. Pitt seems very uninterested in his work, he has done much better stuff before, but here he is so leaden and dull that you want him to get killed off almost at once.. Eric Bana, who was dreadful in "The Hulk" plays Hector, the Trojan hero.. and he probably comes off best in the film. Bana is the only actor in the film who gives a watchable performance.. He radiates the charisma that a leader of his stature should have, and when he is on screen the character scenes work.. Unfortunately, too much time is taken up with Pitt's weirdly homoerotic relationship with his cousin and assorted other dumb plots. Orlando Bloom does what he can with the character of Paris, kindof a playboy prince who starts the conflict by stealing the Queen of Sparta (a bland Diane Krueger) and then becomes a sniveling wimp till the end.. but its such an unglamorous part that you feel sorry for him.. Sean Bean shows up as Odysseus, but his character is given short shrift, odd for such an important figure in Greek Mythology. Again, the film is watchable and even enjoyable because of some great battles and Bana's work... but tune out quickly whenever Pitt starts talking to anyone... his dialogue is terrible and his performance so wooden you could splinter it... GRADE: C+