"It's your job, right? You know, the guy who kills me, I hope he does it 'cause he hates my gut...
"It's your job, right? You know, the guy who kills me, I hope he does it 'cause he hates my guts. Not 'cause it's his job" - Sonny (Al Pacino) in 'Dog Day Afternoon' (1975)
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"I've fought many wars in my time. Some I've fought for land, some for power, some for glory. I suppose fighting for love makes more sense than all the rest" Priam - Ruler Of Troy
With “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy now at a glorious end it not only has brought the standard of special effects to a completely new level, but also has revived the almost dead genre of “The Epic”. Huge armies clashing into each other with towering performances to go hand in hand. With “The Lord Of The Rings” being a juggernaut of cinematic effects wizardry, it’s brilliance is easily proven by its box office figures: all three films grossed a joint total of $2,911,458,965 (source http://www.imdb.com). So it is no wonder Hollywood is manufacturing more films of this type and “Troy” happens to be one of them. Exchanging the copious but near perfect CGI for sun, sand and skin and some grueling clashes.
Based on the Illiad by Homer, somewhat of an epic in itself being 24 books (chapters) long, it depictes the story of the greatest warrior who ever lived; Achillies, of course well known for his weakness. Achillies played by Brad Pitt leads the all star cast for this sweaping epic.
Agamemnon (Brian Cox - "25th Hour", "X2") is the 'king of kings' due to his passion for war. All rivals have been wiped out in the non convensional blood and guts way. Instead, Agamemnon manages to win his battles without too much blood being spilt and therefore has comand of his oppenent's army for futrue war efforts.
Meanwhile, Princes Of Troy Hector and Paris (Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom) are on a diplomatic mission to the kindom of Sparta, one of the kingdom's under Agamemnon's power. The king of Sparta, Agamemnon's brother, Menelaus' wife, Helen (Diane Kruger) falls in love with Paris (Bloom) and secretly brings her back to the city of Troy, the Trojan capital where they marry.
Menelaus is enraged when he discovers the Trojan's have taken away his wife and calls upon his brother Agamemnon for help. Agamemnon has been looking for an excuse to cross the Mediterranean to wipe out Troy. Agamemnon launches the largest army ever known in human history, 50,000 men sail over to Troy. Achilles (Brad Pitt - "Fight Club", "The Devil's Own"), the greatest warrior in Agamemnon's coalition army and the world itself reluctantly goes for the purpose of glory and fame, not to fight with Agamemnon.
The Greeks land on the beaches of Troy and set up camp (a pretty big camp considering there are 50,000 men) and the siege of Troy begins, which ends with the use of the infamous, wooden, Trojan Horse.
Performances are varried but overall are quite good. Brad
Pitt is surprisingly good and has that certain sincerity that combat veterans tend to have. His opinion of life is not exactly precious and we are informed in the script at least four or five times that Achilles is in it for the glory and not to serve Greece and the gods. In fact he has little respect for so called gods, for example; after capturing the beach of Troy, he beheads the golden statue of Apollo. He posses the arrogance of a modern day teenager but has a more noble, caring innerself, which is slowly brought to light with the help of prisoner Briseis(Rose Byrne) who inherently becomes Achilles' love interest. Who saw that one coming? A certain ambiguousness dwells over Pitt's character, whether it's his portrayal of Achilles or the script at fault can be debated any which way. Achilles is going to Troy for glory but he refuses to kill under the orders of Agamemnon. If you want to be talked about for thousands of years after you're lifetime, killing hundreds of Trojans is better than sitting in your tent being all bitter about it.
Eric Bana ("Hulk", "Black Hawk Down") puts in an equally stern performance as Hector, Troy's General. However, Bana portrays a more human side to the other warmongers and you therefore reach to him and sympathise. Scenes with his wife and baby son hit this ideal home but you are never so enthrawled by it that you care about it when the cogs of the war machine start to turn. He has a very immense screen presence and no matter who else is in the scene, you seem somewhat fixated on him, especially the female viewers.
Orlando "Calcium Kid" Bloom (Why Bloom? Why?) portrays the young lover that is Paris with a certain awkwardness. Showing all that skin must make him nervous. The character of Paris is somewhat of a frustrated character, both emotnioally and sexually and Bloom doesn't seem to live up to the task to portray these feelings with any real feelling that makes you stop and think. His dry and rather neutral tone of voice combined with a certain rigedness leaves you somewhat unconvinced that he could woo the most beautiful woman in the ancient world. Speaking of that, it took reportedly 6 months for director Wolfgang Peterson to find "the face that launched a thousand ships". The 'face' as it were came in the shape of German actress Diane Kruger, who didn't really bring anything new to the already overcrowed star-power carousel.
The chemistry between Bloom and Kruger is something you'd expect to be very important as it is the sourse of conflict for the entire story. The chemistry between them is quite bad to think of it. The kind you get on the first date with someone, bumbling and awkward. I for one are not too keen on the whole dating thing, alcohol is my source of power... ahem... anyway the chemistry is near non existent and when the arrows start flying and the swords start clashing, the love story (the source of conflict and therefore the BACKBONE OF THE ENTIRE FRAMEWORK OF THE STORY) is forced to take the backseat to make way for the severed limbs. I almost forgot the reason (or the excuse as it were) for the carnage in the first place.
Brian Cox is farily one dimensional as ruthless king of kings Agamemnon. However, he does appear to be enjoying himslef somewhat, more than the others involved. Sean Bean plays Odysseus (someone imagined from thin air simply to reason with Achilles) with an informal profrssionalness. His character's experiences in warfare make him no longer fear it and therefore finds the experiene ironically enjoyable. He is however underused and only really aerves as the middle man between Achilles and Agamemnon. The aging acting legend Peter O'Toole ("Under Milk Wood", "Bright Young Things") plays Priam; king of Troy. His characteristics of a king are the pole opposite to that shown by Brian Cox's Agamemnon. Although both are men of experience, Priam (O'Toole) has not let his power go to his head and makes decisions that are most beneficial to his people not his own personal greed. O'Toole plays the part with aging grace and subtleness that works quite well amongst the key members of the cast who spend a lot of dialogue shouting orders to soldiers.
German Director Wolfgang Peterson ("The Perfect Storm", "Das Boot") doesn't heavily rely on the use of special effects to show his battles, they are merely used to enhance the story and are never noticed unlike fellow German director Roland Emerich who seems to be put on this earth for one reason: blow s**t up. The battle scenes are technically stunning but never offer anything new or so stunning that your jaw is hanging around your ankles. However it is the one on one fights that are better at creating the whole hanging jaw scenario. The one between Achilles (Pitt) and Boagrius (played by world strongman Nathan Jones) at the very beginning is very short but very intense and shows that Achilles does have method to his potenial madness i.e. being able to bring down a man three twice his size. The one on one between Achilles and Hector is very tense and expertly choreographed. The tense is slowly wound accordingly but seems somewhat in vain as you know who's going to win, unless of course some kind of default or force majure occurs that results in a draw; ie a cliched script tweek that lets both lead characters surivive. The battles themselves are engaging and are never drawn out for too long so as to get you bored and start looking around the room you're sitting in or start playing on your mobile phone etc etc etc.
Screenwriter David Benioff ("25th Hour") pads out his script with memorable, heroic quotes but never anything of real substance. Some of the material the actors had to work with was just so thin that I wouldn't be surprised if they adlibed some stuff to make more sense of it all. Again, Benioff fails to get us connected to the characters and renders a hollow feeling within ourselves. Do we really care who lives or who dies? We may have if you took the time to write something indepth so we could care. I'm sure it's not just his fault, Peterson probably had something to do with it as well. Another thing: Benioff and Peterson try their best not to portray Pitt aka Achilles as a bad guy, when technically he is. They try to give him the same personal qualities as Hector and it seems a little stupid. One moment, Achilles wants to kill for glory and fame, another minute he wants no part in it, make up your mind! If everyone was a good guy, there'd be no film.
I think the problem with Troy is that Wolfgang Peterson wants it to be an 'Epic' so bad that he is prepared to extinguish any emotional core to do so. Artistic licience seems to be everywhere in films in these days and of course in "Troy" there is no exception. Condensing a 10 year siege into what seems to be a few weeks and swapping Achillies male lover for a female (as aforementioned) is all in the name of image. A Hollywood image doesn't exactly walk hand in hand with what Peterson wants to do. The film itself seems somewhat milked. Priam not killing Achillies despite several opportunites to. Achilles not killing Hector the first time they meet on the Trojan beach:
"It's too early in the day to kill Princes"
Stopping a battle and uttering such words like "enough blood has been spilt". It seems a little convient that a mile long battlefront was able to stop simultaneously so that they can depart and then have another battle later on to pad out the script. And what is the deal with so much nudity? I can see the ladies enjoying it but there were times where it was a unnecessary. Peterson was never confident to show anything full frontal (for both gender) but he may as well have. You see Brad Pitt naked so many times that the parts that you don't see due to the camera angle can be easily be left to the imagination. I'm not a homophibic person, i'm don't get reclusive or particularly nervous at the sight of male nudity but it was done so many times in the film, no doubt to enhance its box office appeal: that 'image' thing again that it was getting to the point of sillyness. I know, I know, I'm going to get comments from female Ciao members saying: "Oh DarkMark, you're a man, you don't understand" Oh I do understand, I understand that girls enjoy that brozed tease that is Brad Pitt. But all it is is just a tease, nothing more. You don't see anything that you wouldn't normally get the chance to see: little Brad for example. They may as well of done one full frontal scene and that be the end of it.
Soundtrack is standard orchestral fare of the epic variety, it can prove a little heavy handed at times but usually works well. The music during Achillies and Hector's deathmatch tightens the emotional vice steadily even though you know who's going to win.
BOTTOM LINE "Troy" is a good film in all honesty, it's just riddled with flaws, lots of them. Pitt and Bana's performances are the ones that shine and do what they can with the over-indugent and ultimately shallow script. The battles are engaging and is a film making achievement in its own right, buts lacks the emotional core that makes an epic, epic. Recommended; but don't get your hopes too high, altough enjoyment is guaranteed.
CERTIFICATE : 15 TIME APPROX : 163 minutes
CAUTION strong violence occasional mild nudity
IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY Gladiator - Ridley Scotts' revival of the ancient epic is a more fulfilling and entertaining film.
May the Gods keep the wolves in the hills and the women in our beds.
<DarkMark
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Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
There are many reasons to recommendTroyas a good ol' fashioned Hollywood epic, especially ... more
if you've never read Homer's The Iliad. Dispensing with Greek gods altogether, this earnestly massive production (budgeted at upwards of $200 million) will surely...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
For honour... In 1193B.C. the dandy Trojan prince Paris (Bloom) irresponsibly spirits ... more
away the unhappy wife of Menelaus (Gleeson) the Spartan king. Demanding the return of Helen the Greeks launch a thousand ships and lay siege to Troy. Under the com...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
Advantages: Fantastic cinematography, Great acting by Bana and Pitt especially, Gripping battle sequences Disadvantages: Bloom and Bean's performances are flawed , Slightly over-long
![Troy : The Movie&More (2 Disc Special Edition) [2004] [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78483204.jpg "Troy : The Movie&More (2 Disc Special Edition) [2004] [DVD]")
![Troy (2-Disc Edition) [DVD] [2004]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78503902.jpg "Troy (2-Disc Edition) [DVD] [2004]")
Jun 7th, 2004
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