Troy

Better a pair of hundred sweaty soldiers than 2 loads of fifty thousand men marching toward each other across an ocean of computer effects. The film is legend of the Trojan War, as the fortress town is attacked by a Greek military controlled by Menelaus of Sparta and Agamemnon of Mycenae. The war has become obligatory thanks to the lust of the young Trojan prince named Paris ( Orlando Bloom ), who while in a peace mission to Sparta, seduces the city-state's queen, Helen ( Diane Kruger ). This action plainly bugs Helen's man, Menelaus ( Brendan Gleeson ), not to mention Paris ' bro Hector ( Eric Bana ), who points out, quite properly, that when you visit a king on a peace mission, it is useless to leave with his better half.

What the flick doesn't explain is why Helen would leave with Paris after an acquaintanceship of one or two nights. Is it because her loins throb with zeal for a hero? No, as she tells him : "I do not need a hero.I would like a man I'll grow old with." Not in Greek parable, you do not. If you suspect Helen of Troy could essentially tell Paris anything remotely like that, you'll potentially also agree the second night he slipped into her boudoir, she told him, "yesterday evening was a mistake." The seduction of Helen is the curtain-raiser for the key story, which involves enormous Greek militaries laying siege to the impenetrable town.

Chief among their leaders is Achilles, asserted to be the best soldier in history, but played by Brad Pitt as if he does not believe it. If Achilles was anything, he used to be a man who assumed his very own publicity releases.
Heroes are not introspective in Greek drama, they don't have 2nd thoughts, and they aren't conflicted. Achilles is all these things. He mopes on the flanks of the Greek military with his very own independent band of wrestlers, carrying out a new diplomatic policy, sort of like Ollie North.

He suspects Agamemnon is a poor leader with bad methodology and doesn't actually get worked up till his beloved cousin Patroclus ( Garrett Hedlund ) is killed in battle. Patroclus, who looks a bit like Achilles, wears his helmet and armor to trick the enemy, and until the helmet is removed everybody thinks that Achilles has been slain. So dramatic is that development the picture shows maybe 100,000 men in hand-to-hand combat, and then utterly forgets them to target the Patroclus battle scene, with everyone standing around like in a fight on the playground. Pitt is a good actor and a hunky man, and he worked out for half a year to get buff for the job, but Achilles isn't a personality he inhabits easily.

Say what you may about Charlton Heston but one good way to carry off a sword-and-sandal epic is to be filmed by a camera down around your knees, while you intone quasi-formal poetry in a brave baritone. Pitt is modern, nuanced, introspective ; he brings intricacy to a role where it's not needed. Rather than the larger-than-life creations of Greek parable, director Wolfgang Petersen miscalculates. What occurs in Greek parable can't occur between psychologically trustworthy characters.

That is the full point of parable. Great films like Michael Cacoyannis ' "Elektra," about the slaying of Agamemnon after the Trojan War, know that and utilize a bleak dramatic approach that's purposively stylised. Naturally, "Elektra" would not work for a multiplex audience, but then perhaps it should not. The best scene in the film has Peter O'Toole making an island of drama and emotion in the middle of all that plodding dialogue.

Achilles has defeated Priam's child Hector in hand-to-hand combat before the walls of Troy, and dragged his body back to camp behind his chariot. Now Priam asks the body be returned for correct preparation and burial. This scene is given the time and attention it must build its mood, and we think it when Achilles tells Priam, " You are a much better king than the person that leads this army." O'Toole's presence is evidence of "Lawrence of Arabia" ( 1962 ), which I saw again 2 weeks back, and which showed that patience with dialogue and personality is more significant than action in making war pictures work.