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May 14, 2004

I Had It Coming

I knew better than to hope.

But at least I was let down quickly. When the very first scene of Troy was of Agamemnon completing his conquest of all of Greece (something he didn't do, or even try to do), I was worried. When the second scene was introduced via subtitle as taking place at the "Port of Sparta", I knew this wasn't made for me (Sparta being famously land-locked). By the time they let on that the 10 year epic tale of Troy's fall was to be compressed to barely a fortnight, I was numb to the pointless revisionism.

So I just sat back and looked for the good amidst the mess.

And there was some.

Troy looked very nice, particularly the Hittite/Babylonian influence in their statuary. The armies both looked about like they should (based on Homer's descriptions, which most would say are anachronistic of the actual war, if there was one). O'Toole was great even when given nothing but crap to say. Pitt was fine as Achilles when action was required (and terrible for everything else). Bana was very good as Hector for all purposes. The duel between Achilles and Hector was quite good, particularly early on when they were doing spear and shield work (far less common in movies than swordplay); it was, however, little like Homer describes.

But, overall, an unsatisfying experience, primarily because a modern screenwriter decided he had the talent to improve on the dramatic structure of one of Western Literatures greatest works. It doesn't need its heroic deaths re-ordered (and several completely inappropriate ones added), it doesn't need its heroes motivations re-imagined (if Achilles acted out of love, it most certainly wasn't for the utterly unimportant Briseis), and it certainly doesn't need this film version.

Posted by ghoul at May 14, 2004 07:07 PM

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