Troy | Review

Petersen’s extravaganza looks good, but lacks in drama, depth and insight.

Wolfgang Petersen’s newest epic makes its maiden voyage into a storm of big summer movies, perhaps at a most inopportune time since it seems to contain the same bath water as the interminably lengthy LOTR trilogy. With the usual fair of larger-than-life battle scenes and detailed one-on-one combats, not only does the greatest war of all time get a subdued screen treatment, but the emotional subtext is as vacant as the presence of the Greek gods. Assuming that The Iliad was required high school reading material for all that view this picture, the major uphill climb that the German director had to face was not in filmically detailing how the Trojan horse made its way past the fortress, but in re-imagining a story that everyone seeing this movie already knows.

The basic set-up of Troy sees a forbidden romance ignite a monster clash between titans, a royal mess that pits the aspirations of kings and pointed swords of brave warriors against one another. Brad Pitt (Ocean’s Eleven) headlines the pic as the mythical Greek hero, a fearless, touched by the grace of god Achilles- an extremely buff warrior often in the buff whose weak spot isn’t necessarily his heel, but more like his heart. Using a Gladiator and Russell Crowe’s performance as a reference point, Pitt tries desperately to tap into the fury and emulate a similar stance but often comes up short, giving an appearance that comes off looking like a half-dressed surfer dude who accidentally got past the guards at Hugh Hefner’s home. Besides Brian Cox’s (25th Hour) noteworthy performance as Agamemnon the rest of the cast hardly make their presence felt. Diane Kruger (Wicker Park) as the famed Helen looks damn hot, but the trio of testosterone-deficient men hardly make the pot boil over. Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) plays Paris in a familiar bow and arrow garb, Eric Bana (The Hulk) plays the older brother Hector as a family man more of the 21st century-look than early B.C. and an aging Peter O’Toole is primed up for another desert role, this time not as T.E Lawrence but as King Priam. One of the more bizarre characters of the film is the pissed off, very feisty yet easily screwable Briseis a number played by actress Rose Byrne.

Petersen’s highly ambitious piece fails to bring out the best of a talented dream cast who for the most part are stuck in minimized roles simply playing charades in sandals and going through the motions with a variance of different accents. With a bunch of close-ups of tragic onlooker looks of fear and a roughly composed dialogue exchanges and laughable one-liners you’d think that the actors spent more time in the prop department rather than rehearsal. The side-jokes between sexes provide a comic relief that takes away tremendously from the drama giving the whole affair a book for dummies treatment. Troy makes the Trogan War look about as tame as a beach boys reunion tour and screenwriter David Benioff shapes the classic as a minor tragedy; forgoing the whole God-thing and making the 10-year Greek siege of the city of Troy look more like a tailgate B.B.Q rather than the envisioned hellish fight. With no nuance whatsoever in the conflicts between characters the only alternative is to enjoy the lavish cgi helicopter shots sprawling over the digitalized desert land and sea.

If Troy fails to light a match under the viewer’s seat it’s principally due to the lack of emotion in the fight scenes and the lack of drama in the script. The fights look poorly practiced and monotonously represents the mighty warrior. This is a long film that would have perhaps not benefited from cutting corners but from adding more degrees to its principle characters. Petersen could have cut the costs down and made a Troy within a more contemporary setting, at least Pitt would become more believable in a pin-striped Armani suit than thinly-clothed pieces of linen.

Rating 2 stars