Troy (2004)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
In year 1250 B.C. during the late Bronze age, two emerging nations begin to clash. Paris, the Trojan prince, convinces Helen, Queen of Sparta, to leave her husband Menelaus, and sail with him back to Troy. After Menelaus finds out that his wife was taken by the Trojans, he asks his brother Agamemnon to help him get her back. Agamemnon sees this as an opportunity for power. They set off with 1,000 ships holding 50,000 Greeks to Troy.
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I'm a Greek myth geek, so I was surprised when I realized no big Hollywood attempt had been made at dramatizing Homer's epic poem, The Iliad (I'm not sure if the 1956 movie Helen of Troy counts).
Like Robert Wise's 1955 "Helen of Troy" (a much inferior movie), Petersen's version leaves out the gods completely and tries to envision what this event might have been like if it had actually transpired and was later mythologized by Homer.
Lots of things can go wrong in a sword-and-sandal picture, and many of them did in Robert Wise’s 1953 Helen of Troy, probably the most notable previous cinematic stab at the tale.
Previous efforts--from Alexander Korda's "lost" 1927 silent film "The Private Life of Helen of Troy" to Robert Wise's unwieldy 1955 "Helen of Troy" to the recent television "Helen of Troy" miniseries--have all been equally ham-fisted, each falling prey to the misguided belief that a populist action-adventure yarn could be distilled from classical mythology.
Brad Pitt is so miscast as Achilles that he brings to mind sword-and-sandal debacles like 1963's "Cleopatra."
I don?t know if German-born director Petersen, whose more recent credits include Outbreak, Air Force One, and The Perfect Storm , and writer Benioff, who broke onto the scene two years ago with the Spike Lee-directed adaptation of his own novel 25th Hour, intended for this to be a tribute to those extremely expensive, showy, and badly acted classics of the 1960s like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, or whether it happened by accident.
While he wants to get her back so he can kill her himself ("with my bare hands!"), his brother Agamemnon wants to settle a 10-years long beef with the Troy's King Priam (Peter O'Toole, in the same part played by Richard Harris in Gladiator, the weary elder who embodies the pain of forever-war).
To vanquish his enemy, however, Agamemnon requires the fighting prowess of the unreliable and apparently unkillable Achilles (Pitt), a surly surfer type who, in his apolitical stance and stoical longing for death, somewhat recalls Maximus in Ridley Scott's Gladiator.
Consider what the film would have been like with Russell Crowe as Achilles (or, conversely, consider what Master and Commander would have been like with Pitt)--there's a reason that Gladiator was a success, and it had very little to do with its scripting or plot.
Hector and Paris’s return home to Troy with Helen in tow is met with a joyous ticker tape parade, while Achilles’s showdown with Hector—not only the best of the film’s many accomplished action sequences, but a clash that outdoes anything in Ridley Scott’s overly frantic Gladiator —has a WWE-meets-the-NFL adrenaline.
And after Gladiator won the Best Picture Oscar in 2000, you could have set your sundial against the coming revival of glory-seeking sandal epics.
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The CGI-ed thousand ships en route to Ilium evoke a chill, but for my money (considerably less than Troys budget of a quarter of a billion), Ill take the first glimpse of the Allied armada in The Longest Day.
Moreover, we're treated to a wailing score by the talentless James Horner that sounds too much like Peter Gabriel's 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ music, plus an earful of stilted, proper English, mostly expository, dialogue that no actor in the world sounds good reading.
It's almost inconceivable that this banal, slapdash saga was engineered by the same man who forged the claustrophobic, character-driven brilliance of "Das Boot."
Petersen ("In the Line of Fire," "Das Boot" and "The Perfect Storm") assembled a serious cast that includes Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus, Brian Cox as the power-mad Agememnon, Orlando Bloom as Paris and Eric Bana, seen recently in "The Hulk," as Hector, Homer's most balanced character.
Unfortunately, even director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot" 1981, "The Perfect Storm" 2000, and "Air Force One" 1997), along with screenwriter David Benioff, cannot wrestle Homer's 2,700-year-old, 15,693-line poem "The Iliad" down to the time frame of a feature-length film.
No matter how well director Wolfgang Petersen has crafted war drama (Das Boot) or commanded special effects (A Perfect Storm), Warner Brothers never would have shelled out $185,000,000 in advance without Pitts' presence.
Petersen (Das Boot) and screenwriter David Benioff (25th Hour) have taken a number of liberties with the original Homerian text � for a story set in a polytheistic age there�s scarcely a god in sight, for one thing � and instead pile on the pseudo-epic battlefield carnage, which, while impressive, grows repetitive and stagy after the first three melees.
In general, stalwart action director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One ) goes for a pretty anonymous Big Movie style, with the cameras positioned at all the customary places.
This is a huge movie, bearing the DNA of films like "Titanic," "Lord of the Rings" and "Jason and the Argonauts," with huge sets and huge characters, and it's nearly as enthralling as the glorious epics it emulates.
Petersen does streamline the plot by reducing the apparent length of the siege and leaving the gods out of the visible action--forgoing conventions forged by Jason and the Argonauts , The Clash of the Titans, and all previous films concerning classical mythology.
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Unfortunately, even director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot" 1981, "The Perfect Storm" 2000, and "Air Force One" 1997), along with screenwriter David Benioff, cannot wrestle Homer's 2,700-year-old, 15,693-line poem "The Iliad" down to the time frame of a feature-length film.
The Trojan War from 3,200 years ago is simplified in the old-fashioned 1950s epic Hollywood style through German action director Wolgang Petersen ("Das Boot," but since then a Hollywood action film director with films such as "The Perfect Storm"), and the screenplay is written by David Benioff ("25th Hour") as inspired by Homer's The Iliad.
Screenwriter David Benioff ("25th Hour") strips Homer's epic poem down to the human tragedies wrought by battles fought for pride, greed and lust while director Wolfgang Petersen ("The Perfect Storm") and his cinematographer Roger Pratt ("Iris") fetishize their Achilles, Brad Pitt, with more gusto than they do the woman whose face launched all those boats.
I don?t know if German-born director Petersen, whose more recent credits include Outbreak, Air Force One, and The Perfect Storm , and writer Benioff, who broke onto the scene two years ago with the Spike Lee-directed adaptation of his own novel 25th Hour, intended for this to be a tribute to those extremely expensive, showy, and badly acted classics of the 1960s like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, or whether it happened by accident.
Director Wolfgang Petersen, adept at heart-pounding action ( "The Perfect Storm," "Air Force One," "In the Line of Fire"), guides the battle scenes with a sure hand and a sharp eye for exciting visuals.
Director Wolfgang Petersen is aboard Troy, and after a few hit-and-miss blockbusters (his last movie was the waterlogged The Perfect Storm), he has made his most robust yet complex film since Das Boot, the U-boat drama that launched him internationally.
Unfortunately, even director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot" 1981, "The Perfect Storm" 2000, and "Air Force One" 1997), along with screenwriter David Benioff, cannot wrestle Homer's 2,700-year-old, 15,693-line poem "The Iliad" down to the time frame of a feature-length film.
I don?t know if German-born director Petersen, whose more recent credits include Outbreak, Air Force One, and The Perfect Storm , and writer Benioff, who broke onto the scene two years ago with the Spike Lee-directed adaptation of his own novel 25th Hour, intended for this to be a tribute to those extremely expensive, showy, and badly acted classics of the 1960s like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, or whether it happened by accident.
His In the Line of Fire (1993) squared off Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich as hero and villain on equal footing, and Air Force One (1997) deftly combined the two: a hero and villain operating within a confined space.
Director Wolfgang Petersen, adept at heart-pounding action ( "The Perfect Storm," "Air Force One," "In the Line of Fire"), guides the battle scenes with a sure hand and a sharp eye for exciting visuals.
Before that happens, however, the adrenaline-charged German director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Air Force One) and an army of Hollywood techno-folk provide just about everything an old-fashioned, grand-scale epic is supposed to have.