The Mythological Epic Returns

Rating: 6/10 (17 May 2004)

From Wolfgang Petersen and a huge team of international film technicians and artists comes Troy, the latest chapter in the swords-and-sandals revival. Often debated for its distortion of the source material, Troy, to a modern blasé film audiences, often hides its qualities very well...
Troy is a throwback to the mythology-inspired epics of yesteryear, despite certain contemporary touches that ground it in the new millennium. It owes less to Ridley Scott's Gladiator and more to ensemble epics like Spartacus. People who favor a classic good versus evil or a simple protagonist/antagonist model will be surprised, since, for the most part, the many characters on display are surprisingly developed and layered.
Many of the players give out memorable performances: Brad Pitt goes against expectations with an often unlikable Achilles, but the film's real gravitational center is Eric Bana's Hector. Rose Byrne is given her first chance to really impress in a major release, and the other supporting roles - of the kind that were formerly given to actors such as Jack Hawkins, Alec Guiness, Anthony Quinn and Omar Shariff - shine thanks to seasoned pros having a ball: be it Peter O'Toole's touching King Priam, Sean Bean as Ulysses (worthy of his own self-contained film) and Brian Cox as a mad, warmongering Agamemnon. The only bum notes, casting and writing-wise, are the very bland Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger as the love duo that sparked a massive war.
Two things annoy and stop this from being a really good movie. First, the scale is sometimes ridiculous, and you get the feeling that one pull-back shot reveals way more CG ships that all the wood in Europe could have allowed, a sad symptom of having to measure up to the Lord of the Rings level of epic audiences have grown used to. Second, this is not Homer's Illiad, but rather an attempt to reconcile that epic tale with historical probability. The Gods play no part and the interpersonal dynamics have been adapted to a late 20th century audiences in ways that are at times more progressive (the women are fleshed out a bit more), and sometimes strangely puritanical (needless to say, any homosexual undertones or relationships from the source poem are completely redacted here).
John Ford once said: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". Petersen and team have tried to blend the two, and the result, while not always successful, definitely has its moments and points of interest.