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Brad Pitt in a leather miniskirt, a Helen who couldn't launch a dinghy: This whole movie is one big Achilles' heel.
May 14, 2004 | There are no gods in Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy," only generals, and lots of them. The gods of Greek mythology are, after all, so 3,000 years ago. What modern audience would buy the notion of Zeus meddling, U.N.-style, in warfare between humans? "Troy" is a serious picture, "inspired," as we're told when the end credits start rolling, by Homer's epic poem "The Iliad."
Being "inspired by" one of the great works of literature can mean many things, up to and including outfitting Brad Pitt in a pleated leather miniskirt. But where does inspiration end and buffoonery begin? No one expects "Troy" to be a faithful adaptation of Homer's magnificent whopper. But a deadweight epic like this one raises more questions than it answers, most notably, how do movies like these get made in the first place? It's all well and good if the idea is to liven up the classics for a modern audience. But what's the point of taking great material and making a desiccated, lumbering picture out of it? If the movie gods were paying attention instead of just counting their residuals, they'd be shooting thunderbolts from the tips of their fingers right now.
"Troy" isn't so much a simplified retelling of "The Iliad" as a re-imagined version of it, told wholly without imagination. (Its screenwriter is David Benioff, who wrote the script for "25th Hour," which he adapted from his own novel.) The handsome, featherheaded Paris (Orlando Bloom), Prince of Troy, makes moo-moo eyes at the looker Helen (Diane Kruger) across a crowded room, which happens to be filled with revelers celebrating the recently brokered peace between Troy and Sparta. But Helen is the wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), the king of Sparta. So when Paris makes off with her in a boat -- he sheepishly reveals her presence to his older and much wiser brother, Prince Hector (Eric Bana), as if she were a kitten he'd smuggled aboard -- Menelaus figures it's as good a time as any to declare war. He enlists the aid of his greedy pig of a brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox), the king of the Mycenaeans, who's eager to go to war not over any particular dame but simply so he can seize control of the Aegean.
The tribes of Greece unite against Troy in one massive army; their greatest warrior is the sullen, brave Achilles (Brad Pitt), who seemingly can't wait to die just so he'll be written down in the history books that haven't yet even been invented. "In 100 years, the dust from our bones will be gone," his archenemy, the brave but sensible Hector, tells him. "Yes, Prince. But our names will remain," Achilles recites back numbly, a theme he will repeat again and again during the course of the movie, using slight variations in language and tone, and once or twice, with a great deal of effort, talking and blinking at the same time, just to show he can do it.
"Troy"
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Starring Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana, Diane Kruger
"Troy"'s theme, struck repeatedly like an out-of-tune gong, is that men must do great deeds so their names will be remembered. The complexities of honor, and even the horrors of war, are just little squiggles in the margins. Petersen has set up this "Troy" as a showcase for fabulous-looking people and for supposedly rousing battle and combat sequences. Yet almost every note "Troy" hits is wrong, from the casting to the shaping of the material to the picture's flat, grubby-metallic look (its cinematographer is Roger Pratt, who shot Neil Jordan's "End of the Affair," as well as "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets").
Petersen wants to make sure we're entertained every minute, and so "Troy" is packed with battle scenes, to the point where one is barely distinguishable from another. Zillions of extras march around purposefully, streaming off ships, out of wooden horses and over city walls. Arrows pling, swoosh and clank against armor, piercing a meaty thigh here, a sinewy shoulder there: One of the benefits of telling a story set in ancient Greece is the preponderance of scantily clad, musclebound warriors, but "Troy" doesn't even work as erotic kitsch -- despite all that tastily exposed flesh, the movie is too hamstrung by its own conventional notions of masculinity to have anything beyond a meathead's understanding of sensuality.
