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Somewhere, back in high school English class, you heard the story (that is, if you were paying attention). Playboy Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) falls head over heels for Helen (Diane Kruger), the most beautiful woman in the world—who also happens to be the queen of Sparta. Paris hides Helen on his ship and brings her home to Troy. When Helen’s husband, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) discovers that Paris has taken his wife, he convinces Greek king Agamemnon (Brian Cox) to join him in going to battle against the Trojans to defend the honor of Greece.
Troy tells the story of the Trojan war (yep…even the Trojan Horse part), with an added focus on the characters involved—especially Paris, Hector (Eric Bana), who’s Paris’s brother and Troy’s greatest warrior, and Achilles (Brad Pitt), who’s Greece’s greatest warrior, and who’s less than devoted to his country. While Hector heroically stands up to the Greeks to fight for his brother (even though he believes that Paris made a huge mistake in taking Helen away from Sparta), Achilles plays the warrior diva, only fighting when he gets what he wants. And Paris, the spoiled young coward, decides it’s time to grow up, take responsibility for his actions, and be the prince he was born to be.
Troy wasn’t exactly the gigantic blockbuster hit that it was hyped to be—and for good reason. It’s horrifyingly long (164 minutes long, to be exact), and the story is pretty dull and underdeveloped, making it difficult to follow. And despite the fact that my years and years of literature classes make it admissible for me to criticize the story’s literary hack-job, I won’t. After all, it’s a movie. We all know that Hollywood filmmakers often unapologetically rewrite history, beloved fiction, and works of classical literature—and I’ve gotten beyond that. Instead, I believe that the film’s worst offenses are its so-serious-it’s-funny melodrama and its dramatic clichés (Brad Pitt, as Achilles, is warned of his fate, and as he contemplates whether or not to go to battle against the Trojans, he looks pensively off into the distance so moviegoers can see his incredible jaw line).
On the bright side, Troy has plenty of action and adventure and effects, which will be reason enough for epic action fans to love it. It also has Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Eric Bana, which will be reason enough for a few obsessed female fans to love it. But that wasn’t enough for me. I’d take Gladiator over Troy any day.
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