The Fall of Troy

May 16, 2004

I skipped out on Van Helsing last week, so this week’s Troy was the start of my summer movie going season. Troy promised an epic tale of war, but unfortunately all it delivers is more typical summer fare, hollow and disposable.

They say it’s a loose adaptation of The Illiad, which is stretching the truth by a far margin. It reads more like a pseudo-historical take on the entire Trojan War, including the Achilles Heel bit and the whole Trojan Horse thing. The myths and Gods are dropped and the 10 year war is compressed into what looks like a three-week skirmish. I actually didn’t mind the changes mostly, because structure wise they did a half-decent job in compressing all the storylines together so that everything had a beginning and an ending. There are a few things that stick out as being horrible choices, the biggest one for me being the fate of Agamemnon.

The real problem with the script wasn’t the reconstructed plotline as much as the remarkably wooden dialogue and the weak characterizations. Every line had this air of fake self-importance, which was compounded by the limp acting. The old dogs like Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson and Peter O’Toole were the only people that were able to lend any sense of importance to their lines. Of course, Cox and Gleeson did this by going way over the top, but it was at least entertaining. When Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt tries to work the same material, it just comes off as laughable (literally, as the theater was in stitches in all the wrong moments).

The focus on the human element of the story also ends up hurting the movie too. The main character is Achilles, a killing machine who’s main personality trait is that he doesn’t want to fight and yet wants to be remembered for all eternity. Why should the audience care at all about a whiny, petulant superstar gloryhound? The same goes for Paris and Helen, both of who try really hard to not seem spoiled or selfish, but seem that way anyway. Only Eric Bana gets a character with any meat to it, and he brought enough to Hector that the audience was rooting for him like Trojan Rocky in his battle against Achilles.

The weird thing about all this… I sorta liked the movie anyway. The audience was rowdy enough to laugh at the awful parts and the big action sequences and the one-on-one combat sequences are legitimately thrilling. On top of that you get Brian Cox basically making like Robert McKee leading the Greek army as Agamemnon and the movie ends up being pretty entertaining.

Posted in Moving Pictures