Doesn't trust the source material as usual

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2004)

Another Hollywood epic that spent zillions on getting the costumes, armour etc looking just right and nothing on the script. The dialogue was mostly banal and the British 'Epic Movie Repertory Company' (O'Toole, Cox, Shrapnel, Eve etc) were largely wasted as a result. The best lines were those that most closely echoed Homer e.g. 'There are no pacts between lions and men'and parts of the scene where Priam comes to plead for his son's body. Why won't filmmakers trust the source material more? Granted a film is different from an epic poem, but there are good reasons why the Iliad has survived for 3,000 years. Instead this film got rid of those pesky gods, killed off key characters who don't die in the original and reduced the women to simpering dolts. 'I've had a bad week' (Helen). Even the nods to some sort of knowledge of the original story were ham-fisted-when Paris hands his sword to Aeneas at the end he somehow fails to recognise his own brother-in-law!