Entertaining, but inaccurate (POTENTIAL SPOILERS)

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2004)

I just got home from seeing the movie Troy and i will admit it is entertaining, but being a big fan of The Iliad and The Odyssey, i will have to say it is inaccurate.
Some of the major inaccuracies that i was rather upset with were the deaths of Agamemnon, and Menalaus. In the actual story, Menalaus does not in fact die. He finds Helen and takes her back to Sparta and she is once again the queen of Sparta. However, in the movie Troy, Menalaus who fights Paris (correct) beats Paris (correct) and Paris crawls over to Hector and grabs his "sturdy leg" (correct), but then when Menalaus tries to deliver the finishing blow to Paris, Hector stabs him and then Menalaus dies. When i saw that, i figured, "Well, i guess he won't be in The Odyssey movie if they make one." That's not as big a deal as the other inaccuracy. Agamemnon, who is for some reason portrayed rather barbarically in the movie, is killed by the cousin of Paris and Hector. I think i like his death in The Odyssey a lot better with him coming home to his wife to find that she was cheating on him and planned his death. Considering how he is portrayed in the movie, i thought it would've been a much more fitting end for him.
But my main concern is the length of the movie. Yes, it was rather long, but storyline wise, it was much too short. It appeared that the war only lasted 15 days when really it was supposed to last 10 years. This makes me think that there will be no movie for The Odyssey (which is disappointing) because Agamemnon is dead so he can't tell Odysseus to be careful when he comes home to his wife, and there Odysseus being away for 20 years would not make much sense because he was only in Troy for 15 days in the movie.

But this isn't about The Odyssey. This review is about Troy, so let's get on with it. I thought that the story was entertaining though inaccurate. I thought Peter O'Toole was great as King Prium and I thought Brad Pitt did a good job with Achilles as well. I also thought Eric Bana did much better than he did in HULK as Hector. But aren't you getting rather annoyed with Orlando Bloom? After Lord of the Rings, all he does is just play a foolish lover in every single movie he's been in. And Legolas, Will Turner, and Paris are all pretty much the same character the way he portrays them.

All in all, I would give the movie a 7/10 because it was a little bit too long, it was inaccurate (which was disappointing because I was interested in seeing what happens in the book), and it was kinda quiet during the fight scenes. But it was entertaining and the acting was well done. So there is the reasoning for my 7/10 rating.