A Troy Review

[apolla]

If this were made last year (the year of the colon) this picture surely would have been named Troy: What Could Have Been. Or if it were a double colon like Lara Croft it would've been Troy: What Could Have Been: Missed Opportunities

I made some notes on the metro on the way home, so I shall use them as my basis for my review. First of all, let me say that though I own the Iliad and a bunch of stuff like that (OK, my dad does, same diff) I've never read it. I do however have a certain knowledge of mythology and the like, so I wasn't going in able to nitpick but I was able to go in knowing more or less what was likely to happen.

It did have the greatest of potential. Far more even than Titanic. This is a story that has caught the imaginations of hundreds of generations and somehow it didn't quite work. It could've been a genuinely great movie, improving on effects, battles and the like where films like Alexander the Great, Cleopatra or Jason and the Argonauts fell down a bit.

As an ensemble picture, this had HUGE potential. I mean, look at the list of names in this film! Peter O'Toole, Brian Cox, Julie Christie, Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bean? And that's without mentioning Brad or Orlando. There's some of the most familiar faces of British TV drama in there as well.... it should be a great ensemble like The Great Escape was a great ensemble. Instead... we have Julie Christie as Thetis for about thirty seconds! WHO puts Julie Christie in a movie for thirty seconds?

Anyway... I must say at this point that I liked Troy. I genuinely did, I just wasn't overwhelmed by it. There was no moment I thought 'WOW!'. No, not even the nearly-naked Bloom.

I should talk about Orlando/Paris right now. I do think it was a pretty brave/smart choice to take a role as a cowardly, vain little git, but I also think he was quite bad in an acting sense. I'm sure that if they were to read this, his 12 year old fangirls would attack me faster than Kate Bosworth, but he is NOT a good actor. If he is, then he's yet to demonstrate those skills. It may be that he's relatively inexperienced, it may be that the kind of movies he's been in don't demand good acting (say what you like about LotR, but it did not deserve acting oscars. Sorry guys, but I've seen much better on almost all counts). It may be that he gets given terrible lines to say and that the character was rather underused anyway. It may simply be that he can't act. He did, to be fair, seem to improve as the character improved, and the moment where he chickens out of the fight against Menelaus is touching and believable. At the end, he's not bad... but that doesn't excuse the first two hours. He may be very pretty, but he does not have quite enough charm and charisma to coast on those alone.

That said, Helen/Diane Kruger lacked even charm or charisma. Beautiful perhaps, but otherwise dull as watching paint dry. I get why they wanted an unknown, but did they have to get one who sucked quite so badly? We're supposed to believe these two are so in love they're prepared to spark off a war? It's bad enough we don't see any build up (although I'm told there's none in the original either) but to have a girl unable to pretend to be in love with Orlando Bloom?

Eric Bana as Hector on the other hand, was touching on excellent sometimes. I feel the script didn't give him the lines or scenes he really deserved, but if there's emotional depth to be found in the film, it's only between him and his wife (beautiful Saffron Burrows) and his father. Some reviews have accused the film of being devoid of real emotion, but they did get that more or less right with Hector. Which brings me to...

Peter O'Toole. Peter blows my mind, he really does. I was beside myself with joy when I heard he was in this movie, and he did not disappoint at all. The former Florence of Arabia seemed to me to have the right amount of gravitas, weight upon his shoulders and so on. The scene where he begs for Hector's body was the truly great moment of this film, I'm telling you. Without Peter, this would have been a bad movie. He was solid and great. In the same way, Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson were as dependable as ever they have been... although I don't think I've ever seen Brendan in a film where he doesn't die/nearly die. I don't know if Scots Cox and Irish Gleeson were meant to be using their own accents or watered down versions thereof, but both seemed to waver a little. Both are great character actors and they didn't let us down here- Agamemnon was truly bastardly.

I should get onto the Pitt now, I suppose. He wasn't bad, but then he wasn't great either. I know this is meant to be the story of Achilles, but it really was too much about him and not enough about everyone else. The number of nearly-naked moments were annoying more than anything (although I've never subscribed to the Church of Brad so maybe I don't get it) and frankly, I feel that this movie failed on many accounts because of him. He was all right, but nothing more. I've seen him do better. Again, perhaps it's the script weighing him down. The scenes after Patroclus' death were really very good, but Achilles is a great hero and Brad is just Brad. It wasn't good enough.

As a spectacle, it had all the right ingredients. Lush scenery (I'd go live where they shot the Christie/Pitt scene tomorrow!), armies of thousands, huge sets, big battles. It had all the 'right' ingredients of a good epic, yet I found myself oddly unmoved by it. I knew it from the first scene in Menelaus' palace. You wouldn't believe the number of ancient banquet scenes I've seen in my time, and every single one seemed more... bawdy/vital/exciting than this one. There was that spark of vitality missing from the whole film. It needed a fire lit under its arse and it just wasn't there.

I don't object overall to adapting the book to film. Book adaptations usually fall down when they adhere too much to the book and forget to make a decent film. However, removing the gods entirely was a mistake. I'm sorry Mr Petersen, but moviegoers aren't as stupid as you imagine, and we would accept it without question if you'd done it right. I feel the god aspect would have brought a much needed light touch to the film and might've provided the missing spark. I don't think it would've been 'silly', as I believe Petersen said, but might've actually provided a lot of explanation and context to the film. Without them it seems... empty, somehow. Also, are we meant to believe that Paris got good enough with a bow to fell Achilles after practising for 12 days? Maybe it's all that training he got as an elf.

In the end, this could've been a great swashbuckler of an epic, succeeding where the old hokey ancient-Greece movies of the 50s/60s failed. It didn't suck. It didn't make me want to pull my fingernails out. It didn't make me cheer or sob, either. And you know something's wrong when Sean 'Irritating as Hell' Bean is one of the better things in it.

I left the cinema oddly deflated by it. I'm honestly not sure whether this was because of the film or because of the idea of immortality, names and stories lasting a thousand years, and the futility of war. Whatever it was, it did make me think, and ultimately, Achilles achieved his aim to be remembered forever. He may not have wanted to be played by Brad Pitt, but there are worse things.

I've seen worse. I've also seen much, much better. Must try harder. Or just bring Richard Burton back from the dead and try again. At this rate, I'm looking forwards to the Alexander movie much less now.