Flawed At Best

Rating: 5/10 (27 July 2005)

Achilles: (to his men) Myrmidons! My brothers of the sword! I would rather fight beside you than any army of thousands! Let no man forget how menacing we are, we are lions! Do you know what's waiting beyond that beach? Immortality! Take it! It's yours!
That speech, I find ironic as this was the movie that could have become infamous as a film, a proper classic, in the vein of "Spartacus", "Gladiator" or even "Jason And The Argonauts". This is the movie that could have made Wolfgang Petersen into a Steven Spielberg-esquire Director, a star of Eric Bana, a leading man of Orlando Bloom, brought Brad Pitt up to Tom Cruise's (figurative) height and left Diane Kruger as a potential superstar.
Instead, this movie flopped. BADLY. Now the reasons can be either obvious or mystifying. I'm in the middle. As an action-adventure movie, I want big action type and kick-ass battle scenes. It has action and battle scenes, but they're disappointing. Really you would have expected so much more in the action scenes, it could have been so much better.
It has good acting from Peter O'Toole, Brian Cox, Eric Bana and Sean Bean, Diane Kruger and Orlando Bloom do well, the most disappointing was Brad Pitt. In this movie he was supposed to be the hero and I thought he was a prat. Eric Bana, really, was supposed to be the villain and yet I preferred him to Brad "Arm"Pitt.
It no longer had c Gods in it, which would have really tipped it over the edge. Instead Achilles was just a brilliant fighter. This movie was more steeped in realism, which gave it that extra edge.
Watch it if you want, but prepared to be disappointed.
"In the year 1193 B.C., Paris, a prince of Troy woos Helen, Queen of Sparta, away from her husband, Menelaus, setting the kingdoms of Mycenae Greece at war with Troy. The Greeks sail to Troy and lay siege. Achilles was the greatest hero among the Greeks, while Hector, the eldest son of Priam, King of Troy, embodied the hopes of the people of his city."