½ (out of four) recommended with reservations.
Troy is a film that is bursting at the seams to let out the greatness inside. And how could this particular story not? The problem is that at different times the film is hamstrung by some aspect or another, not often more than one at a time, but enough that the bad moments sour the good. Sometimes the dialogue is terrible, and sometimes it just needed trimming by the editor, sometimes the direction is just off, and sometimes the actors (pretty much exclusively Pitt and Bloom) give inept deliveries (this could also be an editing/directing problem, but it's just inconsistent enough to suspect the actor).
In all 80% of the movie is great, maybe even four star material. The story is wonderful, and the characterizations are just at the point of achieving real depth. Unfortunately there's not the exposition to stablish Paris as a wenchmonger weakling prince more interested in the soft things of life than its hard edges. Or Hector, how he is forged into one of the greatest heroes ever, yet conflicted and a man who desires peace for his home house and family. Achilles and Agamemnon we get that exposition in a brief scene--but alone, this scene feels pointless, as yet another way to glory in the exults of Achilles achievements. the scene is effective at what it is meant to accomplish, but in the greater context it feels out of place. And the 'character development' for Achilles feels like that, as though it is tacked on as an afterthought. He needed more time with Briseis, or he needed a line like, "women... men take by force what they can't earn with words" (okay so my dialogue is just as awful (actually that'd be the sort of line Odyssius could say).
The bad thing was that by the time the (small) crowd started groaning, they were groaning through scenes with excellent dialogue, delivery and acting, but the lead in to the good scenes (and good part of the movie) was full of sporadic awful dialogue and flat readings--the audience just took a while to catch up. The same thing happened in Van Helsing, the worst is at the beginning but the audience is taken out of the film by that, and the film never really gets a chance to reengross the audience because the artifice is apparent and the spell broken.
The score was the only thing consistently bad, three themes (including moaning choir) and a tacked on out of tone hideous song. James Horner wrote my favorite score (Legends of the Fall) but man he dropped the ball here with a rush job that is forced and awful (the editing in of it is pretty damn jolting in its own right, and the score on teh Achilles/hector battle just pissed me off before I shut off noticing it.
Eric Bana was excellent, the girl playing Briseis (Rose soemthing?) was at his level. Brad Pitt mugged for the camera a lot in his solo scenes, but when paired with another actor (not the silly lad playing Patrolcus or the grunts playing the Mermidons) he does some astonishing work that reminds us why he is so highly regarded, and why he'll eventually win something for something. Peter OToole and Brian Cox own their roles so perfectly that its a shame they don't have larger parts. There's the potential for greatness in the Odysseus character, too bad most audiences won't remember him or know who he is amidst the Achilles-fest. Ajax was done absolutely right. Paris I liked the interpretation and didn't like Orlando Bloom, very rarely did he get a moment right (it seeems that there's good reason he was mostly silent in LOTR). I was saddened to see Aeneus thrown away but you can't have everything. Helen is the ultimate Maguffin, it'd have been more interesting if we'd never seen 'the face that launched a thousand ships' but kept her out of the film even more, only showing her from the back, or hooded since she's pointless anyway, a catalyst.
It's too bad there's really nothing in the way of how leadership, brotherhood and warfare affect our humanity and affect humanity. Then again that's definitely not in the text explicitly, but it's sorta embedded in how we understand the world. Achilles and Hector just assume that their presence is absolutely necessary to the utter win or loss of either side but things don't work like that. celebrity or no, soldiers who are morale boosters have a limiting affect in battle on those around them, and leaders tend to have their effects limited to the downtime between fighting--so instead both come across as arrogant pricks so full of their own heorism/legend they can't really escape it. But this is not an issue that really affects my reception of the film, but it's a place that the film could have gone with, and I shouldn't have watched Part VII of Band of Brothers before Troy.
Adam
