Would also gladly wait and go to see "Ithaca" in segue (for the Odyssey)

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2004)

SO GLAD to see the classics return to theatres and capture this level of interest. Pushed by the winds of success of TROY (2004), is it foolish to hope to see a sequel called ITHACA, based on the Odyssey? I think the setup is there. (*** A LITTLE BIT OF SPOILER *** The last scenes of TROY show Odysseus (Sean Bean) honouring Achilles at the pyre.)
At rated R, the younger adults who are not able to see the movie now must be disappointed. Even then, it might be a good idea to read The Iliad in the meantime, and so the time will pass. I did that for JRR Tolkien's LOTR back in 1994, but of course the movies have not been made then. Such works of imaginative literature are sources of great films and they inspire as well as inform movie-goers.
I found Brad Pitt's Achilles easy to believe in. I think it was an interesting role for him. In five or ten years time, who would like to remember Pitt in Snatch, or Fight Club or Seven? Well, I guess time will tell! Pitt's martial depiction of Achilles was well done. It would seem that for Pitt to take on a subsequent martial role would be to diminish a Pitt-Achilles to a Pitt-Genghis Khan or to a Pitt-Napoleon. This Achilles is the right martial role for Pitt.
Now, Orlando Bloom (who played Paris) may do well to explore the benefits of job range. He is good with those arrows, yeah. My teenage cousins are agog over Bloom, so there is probably good reason for casting the guy.
Cast with Bloom a second time was Eric Bana (they both played parts in Black Hawk Down). Bana's Hector gets my two-thumbs-up. The tragic-hero character could not have been better served. (*** SPOILER AHEAD ***) Hector's chariot-dragging by Achilles at the end of their one-on-one combat outside the walls of Troy is proto-typically reminiscent of more recent treatment of warriors in Somalia (a la Black Hawk Down) and in the Iraq war.
Special acknowledgment to Rose Byrne's Briseis. Natalie Portman could not have done it any better.
I believe Wolfgang Petersen interpreted The Iliad for our times. I did not expect a faithful screenplay, and I am not disappointed by the liberties that were taken. In the end, the movie was about TROY and not THE ILIAD. The value in the difference lies in the one bridging the gap to the other. See it and read it, in any order you can or would like. By the way, the book is not R-rated.
7-1/2 of 10.