Troy 2004
This was one of those movies that I meant to see and never got around to. On a cruise in Mexico I met some local guys who had been extras in it so I wanted to see it just to see if I could pick them out (I couldn’t). I finally wound up borrowing the DVD.
This is a very good movie. I was expecting a complex, boring storyline, speeches, heroism, and cheesy romance, but this is thoroughly modern re-telling of The Iliad. All of the characters are far more complex than you might think. I’m glad I wasn’t that familiar with The Iliad so that I didn’t know too much of what to expect. I knew about the Trojan horse and I knew the basics about Achilles, but that was about it. What I like is that they stripped away all the mythology so you don’t see an oracle who tells everything that will happen. There is no nonsense about Achilles being dipped in a protective potion except for his heel. Instead, Achilles is a great warrior who acts almost as a free agent. When he singlehandedly defeats a kingdom, the deposed ruler offers his scepter to take to Achilles’ king and he says “He’s not my king.” This is great stuff.
Helen is very much a buried side story. Yes she is the catalyst for the war, but they point out that she was more of an excuse for a war that would have been waged anyway, like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Again, it would have been easy to say the whole war was about her beauty (which is what I thought), but they make it more complex than that.
I also thought there would be a tangle of people to keep up with, but characters are introduced slowly and indelibly so that I was never confused, at least about the major players. Also there are only a few sentences of introduction to read through, much less than any of the Star Wars films. That’s a real credit to the writers and director that they are able to tell the story without tons of exposition. The movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, but they still pack it pretty tightly.
The special effects are very good. Watching the DVD extras, I was surprised how much of what you see are actual sets. The walls of Troy were actually built in Mexico (and blown down by a hurricane with three days of filming left; so they were rebuilt in Mexico). They were extended by CGI, but still quite substantial in real life. This is a credit to the director as well to know how much to make real and not to overdo the CGI. The fight scenes are very good and performed by the actors themselves. Achilles is given a distinct style of fighting. It wasn’t even that hard to tell who was fighting who, as happens so often in big war movies like this.
I am surprised that this movie did not get more attention when it came around. To me it is every bit as good as Gladiator and I have no problem giving this movie an A.
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital