Ancient Troy war shown with special effects

Rating: 7/10 (24 May 2004)

This time Wolfgang Petersen decided to touch a Greek mythology, the famous one from the poet Homer. This material has an excellent color, camera and fantastic special effects, really competing with the trilogy of "Lord of the Ring". It also has good acting, particularly from the experienced Peter O'Toole, who played the role of king Priam, and Eric Bana as Hector (Priam's son). Brad Pitt (Achilles) was OK but not at the same level of these two actors who may compete well for OSCAR nominations as the best supporting actor.
Historically the plot of the film is not the original one. Patroclus is shown as Achilles cousin when in fact he was an Achilles good friend. Achilles knew that Patroclus wanted to fight and he gave him all his weapons to fight. In the film it is shown that Patroclus went to fight without the consent of Achilles.
The film is shown only with real human heroes but no gods from the ancient Greece took part in it. The Iliad of Homer has a mixed of human beings and gods interacting all the way.
The end of Paris is not shown, he rightly killed Achilles with just one arrow and not four as shown in the film, but later Paris was killed by one of the gods.
Achilles was an excellent and invincible fighter but not so cruel as shown in the film. He always had huge differences with Agamemnon, and this was well reflected by the film.
Little was shown regarding the love between Paris and Helen.

Although all these aspects well not well shown in the film, I consider that it is in general a good material, which may encourage young people to read more about the Iliad. Let also hope that the director, Petersen, is decided to make a new film about the Odyssey.