Surprisingly good in a lot of respects!

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2004)

I was going to pass up on Troy but since I had to use my free movie ticket before the month was over, I said "What the heck?"
First, the bad parts: dialogue that will make you wince more than the brutal death blows; uninspired scenery chewing from actors who should have known better (Brian Cox, how could you?); that washed out landscape and the general bleached look of the daytime cinematography; confused art direction that can't make up its mind whether the Trojans were Minoan, Etruscan or even Persian for that matter!; tie-dyed togas; Greeks who seemed more like roving bands of mercenaries than originators of western civilization; and I didn't even mention the unique pain of seeing wrestlers portray great heroes...
And now the good parts: Peter O'Toole (his delivery, his bit of dialogue); marvelous fight choreography (particularly when Brad Pitt leaps and places the weight of his entire body while making a blow); the intelligent way that Paris' affair with Helen is introduced; (SPOILER ALERT) the look on Eric Bana's face when he sees his brother cowering at his feet ( a mixture of love, shame and resignation at realizing that he WILL have to fight his brother's battle for him and so die in the attempt); the importance of allowing for a reasonable depiction of fear (usually inspired by Achilles) and even cowardice which goes a long way to explaining the perceived divinity of Achilles, and makes the heroism of the men who know that they WILL die all the more affecting; the spunky Briseis; the tragic Andromache; and last but not the least the battle scenes that provoked a genuine, visceral response.
See the film for the reasons I just stated. I sincerely think it would be a shame to miss it even for all it's faults. For once, because they strove for some coherence, and did some justice in telling the story - whereas it might have easily degenerated into a succession of mindless battle sequences. And because Brad Pitt was (to my astonishment) NOT as bad as the critics made him out to be. I might complain that he's not really known for a commanding presence, but then everyone in this movie never really seemed to register as much as they should have, despite having significant portions of the film rightly devoted to relationships between the central characters.