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" TROY " MOVIE REVIEW
PITT LOOKS PRETTY, BUT THE STAR MAKES A STRAINED ACHILLES IN LUMBERING 'TROY'
There is indeed a legendary beauty in "Troy" -- a face that brings the ancient world to its knees, a being whose grace is such that grown men feel stupid and ashamed in its presence. I speak, of course, of Brad Pitt.
The actor's portrayal of the Greek warrior Achilles as a predatory Bronze Age rock star is the center around which this surprisingly lumbering $200 million disappointment revolves. More Hollywood than Homer -- and not very good Hollywood, at that -- Wolfgang Petersen's epic reimagining of the Trojan War falls far short of the pop grandeur of "Gladiator," let alone the sinewy perfection of "The Iliad." At its intermittent best, "Troy" suggests a primitive pro-wrestling smackdown with epochal consequences. At its worst, it's a throwback to the ham-fisted sword-and-sandal international coproductions of the early 1960s: "The 300 Spartans" with better sets. Barely.
The actors -- some miscast, some swaggeringly vivid -- do what they can, but what's missing from the experience is the poetry only a director can bring to an enterprise this sprawling. Petersen, the German filmmaker who came to prominence with 1981's "Das Boot" and has since given us big, stolid studio fare such as "Air Force One" and "The Perfect Storm," plods from scene to scene with high seriousness and a stunning lack of inspiration. Where's Peter Jackson when you really need him? Or Homer, for that matter? Fans of classic literature, prepare to have conniptions: Forced to choose between a narrative refined over the course of 500 years of oral transmission and the rules of modern screenwriting laid down over the last 15, the filmmakers have, big surprise, opted for the latter. Out go the gods and goddesses who play crucial roles in "The Iliad," and in come story beats and character arcs. Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) dies halfway through because the film needs a Big Death just then; even more perplexing, this Trojan War lasts three weeks instead of 10 years because, really, who has the time?
To be fair, Zeus, Hera, and the other Olympians have been written out because modern audiences don't believe in them. We worship movie stars instead. And so "Troy" offers up Brad Pitt on the half-shell as an oft-unclad Achilles, the fiercest and sulkiest warrior of the 12th century BC. The actor doesn't give a bad performance, as such, but there's little immediacy to this legendary figure -- even during the pell-mell battle sequences, Achilles has the posed beauty of one of the more intelligent male models. His encampment love scenes with the captive Trojan royal priestess Briseis (Rose Byrne) focus almost entirely on Brad the laconic stud odalisque.
As pretty boys go, Orlando Bloom goes a little deeper as Paris, the lovestruck Trojan prince who starts the whole mess by falling for Helen (Diane Kruger), the trophy wife of Spartan king Menelaus, and carrying her back to Troy against all common sense. Bloom is young enough to believably play naive infatuation and clever enough to turn Paris into an idealistic son of privilege whose knees turn to jello when the going gets tough. The scene won't endanger the actor's teen-dreamboat status, but the best, if not the only, laugh in all of "Troy" is Paris's expression of sheer terror when Menelaus comes charging at him like a steroid-addled bull.
Kruger as Helen? She's lovely enough -- a face to launch, I don't know, 274 ships -- although I kept forgetting she wasn't Robin Wright Penn. Brian Cox makes a rip-roaring warlord of Agamemnon, Menelaus's brother and boss of all bosses in ancient Greece; maybe he doesn't sacrifice a daughter to get a fair wind here, but he gets to spit out lines like "Peace is for women and the weak" and hold down the macho end zone. In fact, the war of wills between Agamemnon and Achilles feels like a struggle between a winning coach and his pampered star quarterback; maybe that's not what Homer envisioned, but he had the misfortune to live before Monday Night Football.
Look fast and you'll glimpse Tyler Mane as Ajax, Achilles' hulking warrior pal; Julie Christie as Achilles' mom, Thetis; and Garret Hedlund as his headstrong cousin, Patroclus. Even Peter O'Toole gets wheeled out to play King Priam of Troy, and if Petersen keeps cutting to ludicrous, goggling close-ups of the actor when his sons are battling the Greeks, the old lion gets the scene his legendary status merits toward the end, when he confronts Achilles in the younger man's tent and shows the whelp what acting is.
I've saved the most watchable for last: Sean Bean makes a canny and trustworthy Odysseus of Ithaka, although even Cecil B. DeMille himself might have resisted the scene in which the character sees a soldier carving a wooden toy horse and -- say! -- the light bulb goes on over his head. And Australian actor Eric Bana thoroughly atones for last summer's "The Hulk" with his performance as Hector, Paris's older brother and the most capable and most tragic figure in the entire saga.
"Troy" has been shot in greasy, lemon-yellow tones that don't disguise the unconvincing CGI effects, and only Bana -- and to a lesser extent Saffron Burrows as his wife, Andromache -- break through the waxy buildup to become figures both life-size and larger than life. You feel the pain of loss in their relationship more than anywhere else in the film, a loss that's both personal and imperial. Helen? She'll always have Paris.
Much of "Troy" feels more familiar than $200 million ought to (and that includes James Horner's tinny, bombastic music, apparently a rush job after a score by the estimable Gabriel Yared was rejected). The first major battle sequence, with Achilles and his hand-picked Myrmidons storming the Trojan beach, might be exciting if it weren't a flagrant carbon copy of the D-Day opener in "Saving Private Ryan." The final scenes, with Achilles searching the dying Troy for Briseis, suggest "Titanic." In between, the film settles into a fairly invigorating action rut dragged down by dialogue that sounds pre-dubbed into English. "This war will never be forgotten, nor will the heroes who fight in it!" is a typical offhand comment.
"Troy" keeps harping on the Glory That Lasts for Centuries, as if to nudge us in the ribs to point out that, yes, we do remember the names of Hector and Achilles and Agamemnon and Andromache three millenia later. But that alone isn't enough to make a movie that might be remembered in 10 years. For that you need the kind of storytelling alchemy that separates great films from the hollow, wooden ones. Even a blind man could see that.
Boston Globe
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