Troy
Lean, buff, bronzed to perfection, Greek warrior Achilles moves with authority and precision. Unfortunately Achilles is trapped under the bloated weight of “Troy,” a long, drawn out, sword and sandal epic that has more brawn than brains.
An epic poem about an epic battle deserves epic treatment, and if nothing else, “Troy” is delicious eye candy. Director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot) spent $200 million resurrecting the ancient city of Troy, and it shows. His digital magicians seamlessly blend massive physical sets with pixel perfect postcards that lead us to believe that we have been transported back to 12th Century Greece.
What the filmmakers fail to do is seamlessly create massive armies and armaments, blending thousands of human extras with hundreds of thousands of digital extras with poor results. Once the illusion has been broken, it’s impossible to take any of “Troy” seriously.
I’ve never been a Brad Pitt fan. He has done some fine work, but his appeal is lost on me. Unless he’s working with a director like David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), who understands his limitations and exploits them, Pitt is extremely one-dimensional.
Petersen’s functional but stoic direction and David Benioff’s dreary, overblown screenplay do nothing to help the actor’s cause. The direction reminded me of military strategy. Every campaign is mapped out in detail, leaving no room for human error or emotion. What you end up with is one extended, exhaustive display of brute force after another, delivered in bone crushing Dolby Digital guaranteed to pound on your brain like a dull mallet.
Benioff reworks Homer’s “The Iliad,” turning the ten year conflict into a string of unintentional laughs and pissing contests. There are more hoots and howls here than in an owl-wolf crossbreeding experiment. The cast is to be commended for repeating keeping a straight face. I haven’t seen performances of this caliber since Liz Taylor’s “Cleopatra.”
The Gods are angry but suspiciously absent in Benioff’s adaptation. While on a peace mission, Trojan Prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) falls for Helen of Sparta (Diane Kruger), the young and beautiful wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), brother of King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) of Mycenae. When Paris convinces Helen to return with him to Troy, he sets into motion a series of events that will lead the great kingdoms to war.
At the heart of the struggle are two equally great warriors, the independent Achilles (Brad Pitt), who fights for Agamemnon but only seeks immortality; and Hector (Eric Bana), brother of Paris, and son of Troy’s King Priam (Peter O’Toole). As Agamemnon and his fleet of soldiers land on the beaches of Troy, Achilles and his men take a wait and see approach. After watching thousands of men needlessly die in battle, a personal tragedy spurs Achilles to take matters into his own hands.
With bulging biceps, long, ratty blonde hair and steely blue eyes, Pitt looks the part, but is unconvincing as a warrior whose greatest conflict is internal. Every word out of his mouth feels like insincere foreplay just so he can swing his big sword. Swing it he does, in one bone-crushing, flesh-ripping conflict after another, each one longer than the last. By the end of the film you just want these characters to die and get over it.
Even the performances are larger than life. Gleeson and Cox are among the most restrained, while Kruger is laughably bad as the woman whose face launched a thousand ships. She’s not looking for a hero, she’s looking for a man she can grow old with. Please. O’Toole is allowed one beautiful, quiet moment with Pitt, but most of the time, he looks as if someone had just informed him craft services just ran out of alcohol.
It’s amazing what $200 million can buy, but it’s even more amazing what it can’t. Petersen compliments thousands of exquisitely dressed extras with hundreds of thousands of computer- generated clones. Up close and personal, we marvel at the enormous scope of the human element. Then the camera pulls back and all of that hard work is obliterated. The massive armies look like Play Station 2 creations, and go down just as easily.
“Troy” was an investment, but there’s very little for the audience to invest in. The drama is weak and forced, the action scenes massively confounding, while the romance, vital to the trajectory of the myth, lacks passion. “Troy” is like the Trojan Horse that Agamemnon and his soldiers used to gain entrance inside the walls of the city: a flashy, hollow facade.
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TROY
Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Peter O’Toole, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bean, Julie Christie. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Rated R. 163 Minutes.
LARSEN RATING: $3.00
