Movie Review: The Achilles' Show aka Troy

[UnSub]

Saw Troy last night. Enjoyed it more than the last film I saw, but given that was Van Helsing, it wasn't a stretch.

Troy shortens a lot out of the "original" version, cuts out a lot of characters and minor details (like Achilles being gay, since the greatest fighter of his time couldn't be into man-love, now could he?) but is well-acted enough and enough of a spectical to be enjoyable. It does the right thing in getting a lot of solid character actors together to support the movie and no-one is ultimately terrible. Peter O'Toole is fantastic as Priam, Brian Cox is near-perfect as Agamemnon (sp?) (at least this movie version of him) and Eric Bana does a better job as Hector than he did as the Hulk.

Still, this is Brad Pitt's movie, so he gets a lot of screen time. His character direction appears to be "be arrogant and pretty" which he does well.  I got tired of everything being focussed on him though and would have been a bit more interested if some of the other characters got more time to be developed.

Another thing - this movie has a lot of flesh in it, but no nudity. Sure, it's okay to show a character spitting teeth, but breasts are a no-no. Lots of pretty people getting half-naked though, so this may be more for the girls than the guys. (I'm not saying nudity is vital to a film, but Troy likes to tease the audience by not showing what it promises which I find hypocritical.)

The fighting is well-choreographed and manages to look different from typical martial arts films. Lots of posing though, which could irritate some viewers.

Overall I enjoyed Troy, but it lacked something. There are worse ways of spending 3 hours though.

[stray]

Lots of posing though, which could irritate some viewers.

I figured it was just more of the same ole Shit.

Yet, I'll probably see it anyways. I've been waiting for more Greek-Themed films (as opposed to Roman). Kinda strange that there hasn't been many made all these years, at least in Hollywood. Unless you count Myths.

Also, Peter O'Toole is like one of my heroes, so it's worth checking out for that.

[Comstar]

Vague Spoliers ok. Reviews tend to have them.



I give it 7/10. Hector's pretty good, Paris gets to use a bow AGAIN and Brad Pitt sucks. The worst part of the film is Pitt, and a great deal of time is spent on him, to the detreiment of the movie. Chicks might dig him though, as he spends 1/3 of the movie topless. He deserved a far worse death than he got (compare HIS dieing to Sean Beam AND in LOTR:FOTR, and having Bean AND Orlando show up in the same battle only hilights it!).

Who killed Argamendon(sorry)? I'm confused if died at the end or not.

The fighting I think was resonably well done, MUCH better than idiotic asian stuff you normally get these days.

Hopefully it'll make enough money to do the Odyssey sequal that's crying out to be made, though you REALLY need to have the Gawds and monsters make an apperence. I can understand why they wern't in this movie, it's kinda full of characters as it is.

In conclusion, not bad for  story 3500+ years old. Not bad at all.

[cevik]

I never see movies on opening night, especially not movies like this that I know I'm going to hate, but my wife was out of town and a friend offered to buy my ticket for me since he wanted to see it and he just got a bonus from work.  So..

I thought it was one of the worst pieces of crap that hollywood has ever subjected me to, and I've seen LXG.

It spends an absurdly long time explaining to us in great detail that each character is one dimensional and worthless, then they all die while dramatic music plays like we are supposed to care.  The movie would have been a million times better if it just scrolled by some text that said:

Hector - Good Guy
Paris - Good Guy, Romantic
Trojan King - Good Guy, blinded by faith
Argememnon - Evil, no redeeming qualities
Achilles - Conflicted
Myrmidons - Loyal

Then they all fought for 30 minutes and I got to go home.

Watching this movie was like having my great grandmother read me a story.  Every time a character enters she'll say "Then Hector said, you remember Hector right?  Hector is the good guy."  And you're all like "Fuck grandma, you said that the last 15 times Hector had a line, I fucking get it, he's the good guy, there is no goddamn need for you to explain it again you old fucking bat"..

The only character that even had hope of having any kind of interesting story was Achilles, but it's obvious the director didn't want to confuse us by actually having Achilles build his character, so he just beats it into our head that he's fighting for the evil guys but he's not evil.  Argememnon is so fucking one dimenisional that not only is every single act a cold calculated and somewhat ignorant attempt to be "teh ev1l" but he also has an "evil voice" just in case someone in the audience is fucking confused about who we're supposed to hate.  I didn't hate him, I pitied the director for thinking someone that stupid could actually unite Greece.  He's not evil, he's just stupid and mean spirited.  

The only character that I even remotely cared about was Hector, and that's because they spent no less than 40 minutes explaining to me that he has a baby.  It's pathetic that the character development is so horrid that they just zoom in on his baby for long periods of time to make you feel sorry for the guy.  And it's not just once, every damn time Hector is near the city they show his baby just in case you forgot since the last time you saw him, yes he's a good father who loves his baby.  I can just see the brainstorming session now, "You know, we should give Hector a good quality so that people will know that they are supposed to like him."  "Uhhh, how about a baby, people like babies right?"..

The movie spends way to much time beating one dimensional characters into our heads before it finally gets to the 2 action scenes, and then I didn't even find those to be all that fun to watch.  Achilles, the best fightar evar, has 1 move that he uses every goddamned fight, the greeks and trojans spend lots of time either striking gay looking poses in front of each other or make stupid tactical errors that 10 seconds of battle planning would have fixed, and the myrmidons "wall of shields" beachhead storm was just fucking silly and obviously created simply for an action scene to be put into the trailer.

[SurfD]

My biggest question is still: If they had to spend so much time out of the movie focusing on Achilles that he movie practically should have been called "Achilles goes to Troy", why the fuck did they skip the ENTIRE point of background about him being dipped in the river that made him invulnerable as a child!?!  There wasnt a peep of that through the entire movie.  Hell, anyone who didnt know the legend wouldnt have a clue at all that Paris shooting him through the heel with an arrow actually had any signifigance at all.

Also, they completely skipped part where the war was supposed to have lasted for TEN fucking years.  How do you miss that kind of shit?!

[Kyper]

The only character that I even remotely cared about was Hector, and that's because they spent no less than 40 minutes explaining to me that he has a baby.

And that baby's head was fucking huge!  I started laughing every time they showed the kid.  It was about as big as a four-year-old, but it looked like an infant.  

why the fuck did they skip the ENTIRE point of background about him being dipped in the river that made him invulnerable as a child!?!

Spoiler Alert:



Because this was a "godless" movie.  The gods never helped anyone.  Achilles himself said something about the gods being hogwash.  Throughout the movie, he never showed any sign of being invulnerable.  It was a myth created by the soldiers who watched him fight.  

Ironically, he was shot in the heel, then killed by other arrows.  Before dying, he pulled out all of the arrows except the one in his heel.  When the other soldiers found him, it appeared at first glance that he'd been killed by an arrow to the heel.  Hence, the myth was created that he was invulnerable, except for his heel.  IMHO, the movie's point was that the myth was never true, it was created after Achilles' death.  

I though the movie was just ok.  It did go by fast.  I was surprised to learn afterward that I'd just spent nearly three hours in the theater.  

Character development was thin.  

Bana gave the best performance.  O'Toole was very good, as was Bean.  Pitt could have done better, but the script didn't give him much room to work with.  

Too much nudity.  There was way too much half-naked Pitt.  

I'll probably rent it once it's out on DVD and watch again, to see if my opinion of it improves.

[Margalis]

As someone who is half-Greek and a fan of Greek mythology, that sounds terribly wrong. The entire point of of The Illiad was that it marked the end of the silver age of Greek heroes. (Or whatever they call it) Basically the end of the God's direct involvment with man and the end of most of the remaining human blood relations to the Gods. At the end of the Illiad all those guys who have Zeus as an uncle twice removed are history.