Troy

In the late 1950s and early ‘60s Hollywood tried to stem the erosion of its box office by rolling out big budget sword-and-sandal epics such as Spartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963). They conjured up ancient worlds and exotic locations and dressed them with monumental sets and thousands of extras. It was a self-defeating strategy that well demonstrated that more is not necessarily better.

So why anyone thought that fifty years later we needed more of the same is far from apparent particularly when the de rigeur grand scale is largely fabricated with generic computer-generated SFX. Troy has at its best a strong anti-war message and some effective performances but at its worst sags under the weight of irrelevancy and lack of authenticity, something at which modern day costume dramas have gotten very good, at least if staying within the past three or four hundred years. Three millennia however is more than a little optimistic.

Director Wolfgang Petersen had a deserved huge hit with Das Boot (1997) but since then he has never helmed a project of comparable success. As that film masterfully negotiated the cramped confines of a submarine, the skills he demonstrated there are to no avail in this hyper-inflated but unremarkable action-romance movie loosely based on the epic poem ‘The Iliad’ by Homer

Brad Pitt plays Achilles, a career soldier lauded for his prowess in battle, who gets caught up in the Trojan War, infamously begun when a young Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) on a peace mission to Sparta with his brother Hector (Eric Bana), seduces Helen (Diane Kruger) the wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). The latter goes in pursuit and is joined by King Agamemnon of Mycenae as part of his plan to unify Greece. Let the CGI begin.

To be fair a super-buffed up Pitt (whose production company Plan B was a co-producer does a substantial job as the James Dean-ish outsider hero who has no respect for Agamemnon, war or even his own legend but nevertheless bows to the dictates of Fate. Also effective are Gleeson and Cox as the old war dogs whilst Peter O'Toole has both good and bad moments as King Priam of Troy.  Far less effective are pretty boys Bloom and Garrett Hedlund, the latter as Achilles’ naïve young cousin Patroclus whilst a similarly-ripped Bana despite his best efforts to be heroic lacks the presence required to match all the belligerent grand-standing of his fellow actors. To what extent this is due to mis-casting and to what extent the routine script is debatable but certainly the latter is at fault not least for being at times laughably anachronistic.

Women fare even worse in Petersen’s hands, being largely there as examples of female pulchritude and good-wifely behaviour. Whoever cast Rose Byrne as a temple priestess needed to have their head examined and Julie Christie’s walk-on part has no apparent purpose beyond demonstrating that time really can destroy a woman’s face.

 

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