|
TROY Send This Review to a Friend
The story covered in "Troy" dates back more than 3000 years, so I suppose it doesn’t matter if I'm some days late in getting around to it at my local Loews Lincoln Square Theater. The film is really all about Brad Pitt, with his bared chest and bulging muscles on ample display to titillate his fans as he handles the role of warrior Achilles. Pitt repeatedly shouts "Hector" outside the walls of Troy to summon him to battle as Brando once shouted "Stella." Despite the clashing armies and talk about duty, honor and the Gods, this is not a film to be taken seriously.
The spectacle reminds one of old Hollywood, and so does the screenplay by David Benioff, who digs back to Homer's "Iliad" for inspiration. Roger Pratt's photography is worthy, and Wolfgang Petersen directs with the sweep one expects of an epic that is filled with battle scenes, ancient costumes, a Trojan horse and the sacking of Troy by the Greeks, ostensibly there to bring back Helen but really bent on conquest.
To be sure, the characters with reputations that have come down through the ages are dutifully assembled. Orlando Bloom is Paris, Diane Kruger makes a beautiful Helen, Brian Cox portrays Agamemnon, Sean Bean is Odysseus, Brendan Gleeson enacts Menelaus and Saffron Burrows is Andromache. Out of everyone, Peter O'Toole comes off best as Priam, and when he speaks in mourning for the death of his son, one can feel his pain. For that moment "Troy" almost becomes worthwhile.
Pitt looks more the movie star than he does Achilles, and he has a sketchy sex scene with Rose Byrne as the captured priestess Briseis.
One does get a sense of the political machinations involved and the jolting cycle of killing. When should it stop? The question isn't exactly useless at a time when the same question is beginning to tear America apart as the Bush Administration pursues its own military adventure in Iraq. Alas, nothing ever seems really new in the world. A Warner Brothers Pictures release.
|