Thursday, February 10, 2005

It took me two afternoons to get through Troy and it was a wee bit painful. I almost just stopped it but I wanted to see the Trojan horse part, so I stuck to the bitter end. I’m grateful that I managed to miss this one in the theater, although maybe the battle scenes would have been improved.

As with Tom Cruise, I’m not really a Brad Pitt fan. ECD thinks I’m crazy to not think he’s all that, especially as the uber-buff Achilles. But while he’s buff, I don’t find him that pretty. And in this movie his acting was awful; just dreadful. Ugh. Eric Bana, now, he’s the one I wished was the lead, but Hector was only a supporting role sadly. He’s attractive and a good actor - imagine! And the true eye candy was Orly Bloom as the idiotic and adulterous wife-stealer, Paris.

This is a long movie, so there were a lot of places where the movie could have improved, but aside from a couple good scenes, the rest was plodding and badly acted. The worst scene for me was Achilles seduction of Briseis, classic romance novel technique and laughable. Stockholm Syndrome accomplished in a day! It was when Briseis started making out with Achilles while still holding the knife at his throat that I almost turned it off. I wish I had because the Trojan horse scene was a little anticlimactic by the time it arrived.

For other points of view, see Jared’s review and Roger Ebert’s review. From Ebert:

“Troy” is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer’s estate should sue. The movie sidesteps the existence of the Greek gods, turns its heroes into action movie cliches and demonstrates that we’re getting tired of computer-generated armies. Better a couple of hundred sweaty warriors than two masses of 50,000 men marching toward one another across a sea of special effects.

Yeah, I should have read that review before watching it. *sigh*

Anyway, I pretty much hated it. 2 stars out of 5.

LATER: Oh yeah, one other thing. I get highly annoyed when composers try to mimic another successful sound. James Horner pretty much ripped off Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Gladiator and I got really tired of hearing the moany-singing of that chick on the soundtrack. When the soundtrack distracts from the action on the screen, it’s bad.