woefully lacking, utter rubbish in fact

Rating: 1/10 (17 May 2004)

Contains Spoilers!!!
firstly i should say that i know the story of the iliad and its associated plays and poems very well. i know the iliad by homer, the aenead by virgil, the orestia by aschylus etc etc. you don't need to know these stories before you see the movie. i am also a fan of gladiator even though i know it's inaccurate and it is just a remake of the fall of the roman empire. that didn't stop me enjoying that movie.
if i was to give troy a grade it would be 5 out of 10 for entertainment value (not as good as gladiator) and it would be 3 out of 10 for its literary and historical value. its treatment of the original stories stink just about as bad as anything i have ever seen. i wish the liberties they took had been in order to inject something greater into what remained, but everything still felt flat and never really took off. it never really ever even approached the level of a masterpiece and that is a real shame.
the battle scenes are without question fantastic, though there are not as many as you would expect, and the special effects are by and large seamless with the actual landscape. the music was very dull and forgetable and the camerwork was for the most part very good.
brad pitt has an amazing body and i think he is an excellent actor but in troy he seemed uncomfortable in the role and that surprised and disappointed me. peter o'toole was an excellent priam and his scene with achilles was tremendous. hector was played by eric bana and he really surprised me. the role of hector is very close to the original, and despite the fact that hector was physically bigger in the stories, eric bana really made up for his lack of stature. he was a wonderful hector. Paris was played by orlando bloom and he played a coward very well indeed, he surprised me too considering. the lady playing helen i don't remember but i didn't find her either very attractive or very good and she doesn't even appear a the end of the film, she's lost from the story completely! sean bean who i usually don't like played one of my favorite Greek characters, the wily odysseus he was okay. vigo mortensen is the prefect odysseus, but bean also surprised me. the man playing menelaus was completely miscast, but on purpose it seems, and agammemnon was good.
the movie starts with agammemnon at war with thessaly and achilles fights under his flag and wins a duel with thessaely's best. this sets up that achilles hates agammemnon who is a war monger, it's a love hate relationship true to the spirit of the original. since it's ironic considering achilles is the best warrior and lives for battle. achilles wins and Greece is united for the first time. this is not historically accurate, Greece was never united as such, but it will do for the movie in place of complicated explanations.
then we go to a peace banquet at argos which in the movie they call sparta since it's the same place. the banquet is between king menelaus and his wife helen and Paris representing troy with his brother hector. this is the first deviation from the original because before it was aeneas, who was second to hector as a Trojan general and went on to found ancient rome. but in this movie he doesn't appear except for one line at the end, and Paris doesn't even know him, odd for the cousin of king priam!
Paris woos helen, hector covers for him, and when they leave, helen is smuggled out because she doesn't love her husband. i should say here that is all wrong too. originally menelaus was called away to his grandfather's funeral on crete, and Paris and aeneas then looted menelaus's vaults and took women (plural) as a prize. menelaus was also young and had been chosen by helen herself and after the Trojan war they got back together and had other adventures, but in this movie menelaus is a fat old bully. this makes the Trojans look better i suppose but it's a distortion and not a pleasing one.
so agammenon decides this is the perfect excuse to go to war to get troy for himself. however, if you have ever read herodotus you will know that the greeks had been undergoing many attacks for decades and the in actual fact this was the first time in history that the greeks collectively had had enough and decided to fight back! so that is all wrong.
the greeks go to troy once odysseus has convinced achilles to fight, that was a good scene, with achilles practicing fighting with his (now cousin) patroclus. patroclus's treatment in the film mirrors the motives in the original so it was fairly entertaining. patroclus comes with him and wants to fight but is not ready.
the greeks arrive at troy and a ferocious battle takes place and a priestess is taken captive, trophy for achilles. this is all greatly condensed but done very well and is very exciting. we meet ajax who is known as the equal of achilles. in the original ajax after all the years of war goes mad when his friend achilles is killed and commits suicide. in this film he barely know achilles and is killed by hector in the first few minutes! ajax was the character with the soul but in this he's a big oaf. that disappointed me greatly but there was more to come.
in the original the greeks decalre that troy can save themselves if menelaus has a duel with Paris, but Paris is pressed into fighting bby hector who is furiosu for his brother starting this war, and Paris is a coward. in the movie it is Paris who asks for the duel, and again he acts like a coward and tries to run away halfway through. but because it is him who asked for the fight it makes the Trojans look nobel again when they're not! menelaus goes after Paris, and now hector kills him! so menelaus who for three thousand years has always got his wife back, now doesn't! this is so stupid and also forgets that it was a nervous Trojan archer called panadarus who fires out of nerves that starts the next battle.
the greeks take a pounding which is very exciting and they must retreat. the Trojans breathe a sigh of relief and at dawn they attack and try to burn the ships (with bizarre flaming balls, i don't know where they got that idea from) achilles refuses to fight for agammemon so patroculs wears achilles armor into battle and hector kills him, this sends achilles into a frenzy and the most gripping duel takes place between achilles and hector and he drags hector's dead body around in the dirt. this part of the movie is more or less just like the original and is the best part because this is the only part of the movie that seems to work for everyone in the audience.
what is missing completely however is the sense of futility that occurred during the Trojan war. in the originals, every time the greeks thought they had won, more reinforcements would arrive to help troy. amazon warrior women and the black memnon with his ethiopean forces, but this is all completely missing. in the film instead cuts to the end of the story, priam rightly gets hector's body back from achilles, and achilles grants him 12 days for funeral games, but now the film does its own story again and the greeks use this excuse to build the horse as an offering to the gods for their ruse.
in the original odysseus had managed to get inside troy and desecrated their temple to pallas-athena, a horse called the pilladium. the Trojan horse was built as a fake apology to the god for their safe trip home. in the film it's an offering to poseidon. it makes no odds, but it's annoying.
anyway the greeks get in and torch the city, but agamemmnon, who in the original went home and was murdered by his wife ina fantastic play, in this film gets killed! Paris does kill achilles with arrows, but who knows if he goes off with helen, she disappears completely from the story.
with the story annoyances to one side, i did not like how the film was directed or written, many parts had very hammy dialogue and the way it was directed was very cheesy, gladiator dealt with the cheese much better than this film does. i did like the battle scenes they were excellent, but it was very obvious that many of the actors also had problems with the cheesy parts.
i had other problems with the movie too. for example coins being put on the eyes of the people on their funeral pyres - when coins had not been invented yet! the fact that 10 years of war felt like 4 days. the total absensce of cassandra.
some below commented that this was the most gorgeously precise version they had ever seen. frankly they're either on crack or are the illiterate schmuck who wrote this pathetic twaddle.
finally, whatever you do if you're studying this in class don't use this film as reference. you will fail.