Cinema: Troy

So, Troy: worth its weight in gold*?

Well, no. The story's solid, despite some changes from the source material (and I think that losing 10 years from the war's duration probably helps it). But the script is awful, the acting is pretty bad, and you know your casting has gone wrong when Sean Bean plays the clever one.

There's some potential for decent, rounded characters here. Petersen doesn't try to make you sympathise with either side over the other, which is probably a wise move (although it does rather undercut the army battle sequences - the big fight scenes in Lord of the Rings work well because of its black-and-white good vs evil viewpoint, which means that you have somebody to root for while you admire the technical expertise. Here, we have Men Fighting, with the lurching cameras and rapid cutting that have sadly become accepted shorthand for proper choreography, which is rather dull). But the majority of the Greeks - notably Agamemnon and Menelaus - are boorish idiots and the Trojans god-fearing idiots.

Achilles has a bit of meat to the character - sure, it's an archetype rather than proper development, but it's almost the character from which the archetype sprung, so that's forgivable. Sadly, Brad Pitt lacks the weight to pull off the rather bad lines he's given. Peter O'Toole and Sean Bean lend a little something to Priam and Odysseus, without really being given much to work with.

Orlando Bloom is awful as Paris. Despite occasional moments of romance or bravery, he maintains a perpetual Scoody-Doo style cower. Eric Bana plays Hector, probably the most rounded character in the film. In the first few scenes, Bana is so bad that, not recognising him under his beard, I thought it was a bad extra or mate of the director's but he does improve. The problem is that his character has to go against his own reasoning on several occasions.

One interesting feature of this film is that, to varying degrees, the audience knows the outcome.** The film takes a few liberties with the fates of its characters, but the fundamental of the story is the horse, of course. Petersen doesn't get to this until pretty late on, and it doesn't take up much time. I think this makes the film feel longer than it is, and as soon as the pace flags, I found myself thinking "How much longer? He hasn't even got to the horse yet."

There's some good stuff. I was impressed with the sheer size of the city of Troy - much bigger than I had pictured it, yet it really needed to be that size. The size of the armies is also impressive, if no longer a novelty (and making it somewhat implausible that all of them are watching Hector fight during the second battle scene, and then all stop fighting as a result). Best of all is the sense of doom that Petersen lays over Hector as he goes out to his last battle. (I'm not sure how much of the audience is expected to know that it's his last battle, but I think it works regardless.) Unfortunately, this is intercut with Pitt standing outside the gates bellowing "HECTOR!" while Bana goes round saying his goodbyes to everyone. It reminded me of Fabien Barthez tapping his boots against the goalposts while Steed Malbranque waited to take his penalty. Unintentionally funny at the moment of highest drama. That sums up the film for me.

4/10

*Yes, I am going to start my blog with a joke that I probably have to explain. Start as you mean to go on.

** Although, the problem isn't as bad as with The Passion of the Christ, a film that really needed a twist ending to justify taking so long over Jim Caviezel being whipped and climbing a hill. Talk about flogging a dead horse.