Good Idea executed Badly

Rating: 5/10 (18 May 2004)

I have been looking at the trailer for Troy for quite some time now: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, you can't go wrong right?
Wrong.
This movie should have had the same emotional resonance as Gladiator. Instead, we get the cheesy, over-acted, bad TV-movie quality that seems to haunt so many films of today. Wolfgang Petersen, director of such movies as Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, and The Perfect Storm should have been able to pull off the feat of steering this movie on the proper course. Unfortunately, he could not seem to do so, with bad pan-away shots, poor scene blocking, a bad soundtrack, and lag-time lines.
All the actors did a great job, with the exceptions of Diane Kruger (Helen) and Brian Cox(Agamemnon). Brian Cox is a brilliant actor, but he over-acted for this film. Diane Kruger, while beautiful as Helen, lacked the ability to well, act. Orlando Bloom seemed somewhat lost as Paris, but that is not his fault as his character was not written very well. Eric Bana, Brad Pitt, Saffron Burrows, and Rose Byrne all turned in star performances in their respective roles.
However, the script seemed to be written by a drunken frat boy still on a bender with too much lag time in the lines. For the most part, all the actors did well, it is not their fault that the script was bad and that the director was out to lunch.
Jerry Bruckheimer should have produced this film and paid Ridley Scott a little something extra to direct it. As a film-goer, I should have felt tears and sorrow during the funeral pyre scenes, instead, I felt disappointment because the shots were to small. The camera should have been lifted overhead and far so that I could see all the pyres burning at once. Also, during the "Braveheart" speech Brad Pitt gives to his fellow warriors as Achilles, I should have been roused to the challenge of the fight, not felt like a spectator at a really boring baseball game. And the scene where Achilles goes to challenge Hector was like watching a man call for his lost dog ("Hector, here Hector! Hector? Hector are you there?"). It seems as if all the money that should have been spent on the script was given to Brad Pitt.
Now I will say this, there is some Major Eye Candy in this movie. Eric Bana built up as Hector was hot, as well as Brad Pitt, who for all intensive purposes, presented the Best Body Possible for this film. Orlando Bloom was equally hot as Paris, but there should have been a steamy, steamy love scene between him and Diane Kruger. If this is the face and the affair that launched a thousand ships, we should have seen the action that started it all. Last but not least, the editing was awful, they could have shaved about 30 minutes or more of lag time and filled, with well, something good.
All in all, I would buy Troy on DVD simply for the eye candy and nothing more.
One last bite: To all you classicists out there who are ragging people who have not read the Iliad and therefore cannot criticize this film, get over yourself. I have studied and graduated from a liberal arts college, I've read my fair share of the classics too thank you very much.