A conventional, tedious film

Rating: 3/10 (19 May 2004)

As soon as the Warner Brothers logo had disappeared, the lines of words appeared. I knew immediately we were in trouble: any epic film that begins that way (and amazingly followed by oral narration) in this day is lacking in any kind of imagination. (Didn't Orson Welles show others a less conventional way to begin way back in 1941?) The next scene promised much: two armies lined up and ready to face off. But it delivered little: Achilles jumping into the air and stabbing some beefcake twice his size. And the rest of the film continues along these lines: unfulfilled promises and tedium.
The biggest mistake the filmmakers made (other than paying Brad Pitt too much money for very little talent) was to exorcise the gods and goddesses from the story. To do so meant that the poetry had to be exorcised too (and there is no poetry, either verbal or visual, in this film). And since there is no poetry, there is no emotion, or at least none of any sincerity and certainly none that the audience can be moved by. All we're getting is the story without the emotional resonance and intellectual depth. Stripping the story of the gods and goddesses also makes the mortals look much more foolish than they would normally seem.
Another poor choice was to simplify the women and to have them played by "former models." The myths and plays make a point to show the emotional devastation visited on the women of Troy by this stupid war (which seems to last maybe a month in the film; I think a philosophical point was being made by having the war last ten years in the text). Of course, the filmmakers took out two of the most important female characters: Cassandra and Hecuba. They are the most emotionally effected. But, we still have Helen and Andromache, both looking gorgeous, even as Troy burns down around them. (The chemists who created makeup back then must have known something ours don't: how to keep makeup from running.)
Both Brad Pitt and Eric Bana are failures in their roles. Neither registers much sincere emotion. (Pitts reaction to his "cousin's" death verges on the comical.) Pitt cannot see beyond his own self-love and self-adoration, while Bana seems totally lost about how to react to anything. He's stupefied. And they both slur their words. If these Hollywood pretty boys (unfortunately, Orlando Bloom - the most effeminate of today's actors - complete the triumvirate) are the best we can do in the way of heroes, we need to stop trying to make such movies. Peter O'Toole? I just felt embarrassed for him.
So, why did I give this as much as a vote of 3? The sets do, indeed, give us some idea of what Troy (if it actually existed as seen in the myths) would have looked like. The costumes are pretty good too.