ARE ANY OF YOU GUYS INTERESTED IN MORE OF MY MOVIE REVIEWS?
I knew I was in for a real treat when the audience, during the first ten minutes of the new mega-blockbuster epic Troy, began chuckling at the humorous dialogue between King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) and the King of the last rival Greek Statehood. Of course they were chatting about the legendary, and damn near super human Achilles (Brad Pitt), and how he could win the war by fighting the opposing army’s greatest fighter. It was also kind of funny how thousands of computer generated men had to wait around because Achilles was too busy sleeping with two, yes that’s right, two, beautiful women, in order trouble himself with the pesky battle at hand. God, I love epics. Except, as I found out, the epic is dead. Whether you liked Braveheart or not, it is arguably the last authentic epic ever made.
Troy is the story of how the Greeks decided to invade the Trojan Empire and what happened because of that decision. We all know about the Trojan Horse and Helen, but this movie is not really about them. This is the story of Achilles, and on a lesser note, Hector, though it does make sure we get the back story. If you’re not to knowledgeable on the subject, here’s a refresher course.
Greece was once a country with many kingdoms until King Agamemnon and his brother King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) decided to unify the country under one ruler, which is of course Agamemnon. After that’s accomplished, Menelaus holds a ceremony where the two princes of Troy attend in order to establish peace between the two great nations. The princes’ are Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). Unfortunately for the citizens of Troy, Paris has an affair with Helen (Diane Kruger) and they fall in love. When the princes’ leave Greece to return home, Paris sneaks Helen aboard Hectors ship so they can live happily ever after. Too bad Helen is King Menelaus’ wife, and he has a short fuse. Menelaus runs to his brother and begs that they go to war so he can have his vengeance. King Agamemnon thinks that’s a splendid idea because he hates the fact that there is a neighboring country that isn’t under his leadership. Oh yeah, and because of his brother too. Three days later, they send 1,000 computer generated ships across a computer generated ocean to wage war against a computer generated city and army. God, I love epics.
Okay, that’s enough about Helen, actually, it really is. She’s more or less relegated to eye candy duty for the rest of the flick, except of course, when Brad Pitt isn’t showing his bum for the ladies who’re sick of the battle scenes. Like I said earlier, the bulk of the movie is about Achilles. Now, I like Brad Pitt a lot. Most of his movies I’ve paid good money to see in the theaters, but I realized something while watching Troy; I like him a whole lot better when he’s playing a psychotic character. 12 Monkeys, awesome. Snatch, excellent. Kalifornia, stupendous! Troy, ZZZzzz… He’s boring. Very boring. I found myself frustrated that I was liking Eric Bana more than Pitt. I haven’t really seen Bana do anything significant in the past, but here he is, outshining the guy who gets to sleep with Jennifer Aniston. God, I love epics…no, wait…I mean…God, I hate Brad Pitt.
My biggest complaint about this film isn’t the fact that it’s more of an action/drama than epic, it isn’t even the fact that most of the actors were acting either like hams or like comatose patients from Bellevue, or even that I hate the downfall of the epic because of the cheaper CGI (though that does get a major harrumph from me), or that the music is utterly forgettable instead of being majestic like epic music should be, it’s that for the entire length of the movie…I didn’t feel a damn thing at all! I could care less about anybody, well…besides Hector a little tiny bit. A movie that is supposed to be an epic should deliver these three things at the very least:
a) Tons of extra’s
b) Sweeping cinematography
c) An emotional punch
Troy managed to deliver only one of those things, and most of that is because they have powerful computers. All but three central character’s within the film had crying scenes or speeches that were supposed to invoke emotions. None of them phased me, or the audience I watched this with. There was actually a scene where Achilles’ breaks down and I could hear laughter throughout the theater. Personally, I didn’t feel like laughing because I was concentrating on a meatloaf recipe I wanted to try out. God, I love epics.
Now I know that it sounds like I hated the movie, but that isn’t entirely true. I just didn’t love it. It had its moments, like when Achilles and Hector have their duel, and when Helen showed her lovely fanny, and it’s always a pleasure to see O’Toole and Sean Bean play decent roles, but the good was outweighed by the mediocre and bad too often. Another thing that pleasantly surprised me was the minor role given to Nigel Terry, who some of you may remember as King Arthur in Excalibur. Overall, the humdrum acting, the massive CGI, and the weak attempts at humor early on, distracted me too much and too often. It’s going to be a sad reign for the Hollywood epic from now on, because it used to be that a script had to be exceptional in order to warrant the prohibitive costs involved in making them. Now, all you need is an adequate script and a budget large enough to hire a group of computer experts. It’s really not the same thing. God, I miss the epics.
I finally got around to seeing this movie this weekend on DVD. As a child I loved Greek/Roman mythology and I read The Trojan War several times, so I was disappointed at times when the movie strayed from the original story. But overall it's an OK movie. I agree that Eric Bana made a good Hector and I found myself liking his character best. I couldn't stand Paris when I was younger and I still can't.
I am a big fan of Brad Pitt, especially in:
1) A River Runs Through It
2) Fight Club
3) Snatch
4) Legends of the Fall
but I have to say that he didn't deliver the goods in this movie. His Achilles just doesn't come off.
There are reasons that we still read the Iliad, thousands of years later. And this movie hit all of them!! It's been a couple of decades since I read the book, but everything I remember was there, and done SO well!! What a powerful flick!!!
Finally got around to watching this tonight. Man oh man - it is only very loosely based on The Iliad. They have all sorts of people die in the movie who do not die in the story, they throw in bits of associated mythology of both the Greeks and the Romans (the Romans thought that their civilisation was founded by Aeneas and other Trojan refugees). Other people who die in the story go on to live in the movie...
Some of the changes are good - I have always extremely disliked the constant meddling of the gods and goddesses in the story ~ but otherwise, I do not know if I have ever seen a story changed so much from its source book.
I did enjoy it, though. I thought Brad Pitt was good as Achilles - much betetr than I had expected, in fact.
Troy.: The king of Sparta, Agamemnon, has been trying to unite Greece by conquering one city at a time, with leaves Troy with its high walls alone. Then a prince of Troy takes Helen, wife of Agamemnon's brother, with him to Troy to be his live-in lover, and it starts war between Sparta and Troy. King Agamemnon often has to depend upon the demigod Achilles to procure victory, but he and Achilles hate each other. The movie's production and CGI effects are impressive, but the acting is average and the movie is just too long (3 hours). Based on the poem The Iliad by Homer, all the famous details of the story are here, including the hollowed-out giant wooden horse and the vulnerability of Achilles' heel, but I found the movie to be overblown. The many fight scenes seemed drawn out to the point that they felt silly to me, but otherwise I liked Troy, because of the aforementioned great production standards.
