Troy – An average version of an epic. Review on Troy Movie

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.- Benjamin Disraeli

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

=====================================================================

INTRODUCTION

It is a well-known fact that many classic books have a cranky movie version. Only a select few, like the LOTR, To Kill A Mocking Bird, Moby Dick and all have exceptional movie versions. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were classics. Many of the characters in Greek Mythology are adored so much and so are the incidents. Achilles, Helen of Troy, Trojan horse, Zeus and the list goes on and on. Sometimes one would expect a heart filling picturization of an epic in the proportion of LOTR or Ramayan when you love it to the core.

I was relieved of those expectations, when I heard a lot about this movie before I visited the theatre. I visited AMC 22 theatres in Pepsi Forum in Montreal downtown couple of weeks back, when my wife insisted on seeing “Main Hoon Na”. Much to my joy and to her disappointment, the last screening had already started and was 30 minutes into the movie. I had no choice but to choose to watch “Troy”. I went in with lesser expectations.

=====================================================================

THE PLOT

Plot is surrounding the Trojan war around 1193 BC. The Prince of Troy, Paris (Orlando Bloom), falls in love with the most beautiful Greek woman Helen (Diane Kruger). Helen runs off with him to Troy, much to the dismay of her husband Menelaus who is the king of Sparta. Menelaus is the brother of the menacing and mighty king Agamemnon. A fleet of 1000 ships into leads them troy carrying the mighty hero, Achilles (Brad Pitt). Achilles is fighting for Agamemnon to fulfill his obedience for Odysseus (Sean Bean). Paris has an exceptional warrior as his brother – Hector (Eric Bana) and a loving dad Priam (Peter O-Toole). The rest of the story is surrounding the war and Briseis, who falls for Achilles. For the benefit of the viewers, I shall stop at this point

=====================================================================

ANALYSIS

Wolfgang Peterson, the director of the movie, has given so many classics such as The Perfect Storm, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire and Das Boot. The expectations were huge. This film was supposed to do wonders to Brad Pitt, just like what Gladiator did for Crowe. Peterson has lost sight totally, I think, whilst making this film, due to so many issues such as Iraq war and all. In my opinion, this film-lacked soul from the moment “go”. You do not see mighty war and a graceful picturization of the Trojan war and it looks like an anti-climax, especially if you have watched “The Return of the King” and all.

This film failed to impress me because

~ The movies settings and art direction were OK but not enough.

~ The screenplay was kind of hollywoodised and lacked some momentum.

~ The casting was awful. One may think Paris (Orlando Bloom) was a fool a fool to have fallen for a woman like Helen (Diane Kruger). She does not look so divine, as touted by the epic. The miscasting is so visible, except for Eric Bana who fits the bill perfectly as Hector.

~ The war scenes are quite mediocre and the Trojan horse does not look as mightily described in the books (I read the translated version a while ago)

~ The dialogues were not depicting the period of occurrence.

~ The fight scenes and depiction of Troy was not great. Troy definitely looked like the Sierra Nevada deserts in California (where it was filmed) and Morocco.

~ The clothing did not look authentic or the time that was depicted. One is left to wonder whether the weapons shown using would have existed as per the epic

~ The killing of Achilles is shown in a mediocre fashion. His weakness (his heels are his weakness, due to the holding of his heels by his mother when dipping in river Styx when he was a kid)

~ Agamemnon was shown in a cranky manner.

~ The legend of Hector is not shown with some soul.

~ Miscasting is so bad that you start to detest the name of “Helen of Troy”

~ The scene of desecration of Apollo lacked some mystical touch

~ An Immortal like Achilles is shown in a high-school kid with bad blood. This is atrocious.

However, the movie had its moments, especially.

~ The mighty scene of 1000 ships sailing in sea together

~ The war of the Trojan and Greek forces was nice. The reason for the same is that it looked real with many real men fighting, instead of CGIs

~ Brad Pitt looked like a real warrior and he put a lot of weight and muscles

~ Eric Bana is classic and his dialogues are superb

I think I have said enough. As far as acting is concerned, Eric Bana and Brad Pitt have done nice jobs. Everyone else is average. The accents of the actors are funny and you can see the mix of English, American and Australian accents in this film all along.

The music score is above average and the editing is bearable.

As a corollary, it would be foolish to compare Troy with Gladiator or Ben Hur or such hugely popular movies. They all had souls. I definitely felt it was missing in this film. One reason is the length of the film and it is too long. They could have done away with the compressed version detailing the necessary. Obviously, Scott could have done an excellent job compared to Peterson, in my opinion.

=====================================================================

TECHNICALITIES

=====================================================================

CONCLUSION

All in all this is a average flick. In my opinion, you can go for better films than this one. You are better off with them. I will not recommend it personally. On the other hand, watch it if you want to see a movie version of this great epic.

I hope you liked the review. Do comment, if time permits

KALIL

PS:- Ancient Greek history can be read from the following link https://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa100599.htm

=====================================================================

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. Napoleon Bonaparte