I decided I had to see TROY because I hate to pass up a historical epic that will shed some light on the origins of our own civilization and will perhaps help me better to understand our own place in history. I can't tell you how much I've learned from such fine efforts as SPARTACUS (the Tony Curtis, not the Goran Visnic, version), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, and more recently PEARL HARBOR. Sadly, TROY shed light on nothing at all, unless you count a strong suggestion that tie-dye originated in the famous walled city of old.
So, I'm sure you know the story by now. Just in case: Helen is beautiful and married to Menelaus, an old Greek guy whose brother Agamemnon is bent on conquering all the local civilizations and forming the 5 boroughs of Greece. Sadly for Agamemnon, the Trojans - off across the Mediterranean somewhere in Anatolia - want peace, and have just signed a treaty with Menelaus. Happily for Agamemnon (and drama), the younger Trojan prince, Paris, has started an affair with Helen and convinces her they should flee together to Troy. This launches the proverbial 1000 ships of United Greece to go to war with Troy, ostensibly to get back Helen, but we know through the 100 not-so-subtle hints dropped by the director that Helen is just an excuse to annex Troy.
Oh, then Achilles (Brad Pitt), the fearless and seemingly invincible warrior, decides to go because he looks good in armor and hates to miss a good fight. Hector (Eric Bana), Troy's greatest warrior, along with his brother Paris and Helen arrive in Troy just ahead of the Greeks, long enough for a night of celebration before the war gets rolling. Things come to a bit of a stand-off, Menelaus is killed, Paris proves he's a wimp, Helen wonders just what she got herself into, and Hector shows his wife (Saffron Burrows) the back way out of town so that she can take Hector Jr and her fabulous gold jewelry and go north to found England and Ireland, as - judging by their accents --the ancient Greeks and Trojans were the direct descendants of today's beloved Brits and Celts. Then Hector accidentally kills Achilles "kissin' cousin" Patroclus and Achilles not accidentally kills Hector, but decides not to further desecrate his body when the Trojan king, Priam (Peter O'Toole) begs for his son's body back. Oh, then the Greeks seem to give up and go away, but they leave this giant - come on, say it with me - HORSE on the beach, and against the suggestion of his son Paris (because by now, who, really, would listen to the wife-stealing wimp, even though he was right for once?) the Trojans bring the horse into Troy and - come on, don't make me say it.
Okay, the Greeks jump out at night and sack Troy. During the sacking, Achilles takes an arrow in his - yeah, this time with feeling! - HEEL and dies. And Agamemnon gets killed but the Greeks still own Troy. Not knowing what to do with it, they apparently burn it to the ground in the sort of victory celebration currently favored by certain Middle Eastern nations that shall go unnamed here.
And there you have it. Though I wondered to my friend, didn't Agamemnon have a date with a bar of soap and a slippery bathtub set up by his wife Clytemnestra? So much for history.
For all the money and effort spent, the whole thing felt as fake as a 1970s Harry Hamlin Hercules movie; it was permeated by a sort of modern sensibility that prevented any real suspension of disbelief. At any minute, it would not have been incongruous for Achilles to take one look at Troy and say, "Whoa." The sets looked like STARGATE SG-1, and, hey, no one even knows what Troy looked like, so why did it have to look so much like Southern California-style pastiche? You know, a little Greek, a little Persian, a little Egyptian, a little Mesopotamian for flavor.
And what about the acting? Only Peter O'Toole and Eric Bana were convincing. Brad Pitt may look like a god, Lord bless his cute little butt, but his acting? Oy. He affected a British accent to fit in with rest of the cast, but he still seemed oddly out of place, like a surfer who took a wrong turn off Malta. Worse yet were Helen and Paris (Orlando Bloom). Maybe I have a thing for pointy ears, but Orlando made a better elf (in Lord of the Rings) than feckless Trojan. He seemed vaguely appealing, perhaps enough to lure a bored housewife from her home in Sparta to his palace in Troy. Then again, Diane Kruger, the blandly blonde pretty German they found to play Helen, seemed like she could have been lured from home by any shiny object. The kings seemed too scruffy to be Greek - somehow I never pictured ancient kings of Sparta looking like unshaven Irishmen on the morning after St. Patrick's. At least on all those black and red vases they look very clean cut and somewhat stylish. These guys were old and paunchy and I wanted to take clippers and flea shampoo to all of them. Another misconception brought about by my inadequate Classical education? Perhaps, but I liked it better the old way.
The moral of this story? Beware of Germans bearing directing credits on ancient Greek epics.