Toy horse

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2014)

It would take a cinematic genius to turn one of the greatest epic sagas ever narrated into a worthy two-hours movie. Alas, director Wolfgang Petersen is no such genius, just a competent craftsman.
A passable historical epic in its own right, Troy is a disastrous adaptation - every choice reeks of bad art, from hilarious title cards to dialogues alternating between sub-Whedonesque pithy banter and lofty one-liners a critic astutely described as "faux legendary". Individual duels are glossy and energetic, but set-pieces with a wider scale fall disastrously flat, lacking the creativity of, say, Jackson's for the Lord of the Rings saga.
Casting is canny, with Eric Bana, Sean Bean and Peter O'Toole being the highlights. Pitt is decent, but fails to capture the terrifying side of Achilles - among the many miscalculations of the script, the omission of the carnage in the river with its water turning red didn't help. Usually reliable Cox and Gleeson are embarrassing: blame writing and direction, since they've abundantly shown elsewhere they can act. Bloom is a non-entity smartly cast as vapid Paris. Kruger is lovely and that's all the role needs - I have to smile at the "not THAT beautiful" comments, as that's exactly what the character gets in the poem too.
The script is visibly uncomfortable with its source material. It's not just that the Achilles-Patroclus relationship is amusingly turned into a more blockbuster-friendly "cousins" kinship. The biggest mistake is erasing the mythical element so crucial in the saga, with gods meddling in the war, fighting among mortals, their fates deeply interwoven with the human protagonists' - without this, it becomes the rather mundane history of a siege. I guess they assumed modern audiences wouldn't appreciate battles involving beings with supernatural powers. Oh wait, Star Wars, X-Men, Lord of the Rings... never mind.
A few scenes glimmer in the midst of Troy (like the poignant confrontation between Achilles and Priam), the power of the source material shining through this lackluster execution.
6/10