Troy, the Movie

I really want to like Troy. I really do. I remember watching it in the theater oh so many years ago and just feeling a sense of disappointment.

The idea of doing the Illiad as it may have actually happened, not the gods infested, joyous insanity that Homer wrote, is a cool idea. But the movie doesn't work.

It implies that the Trojan war lasted merely weeks rather than ten years. The dialogue is so clunky that even some really good actors can't speak it well. (Although the guy who plays Odysseus handles it perfectly.) Achilles is the person we follow, but he's an arrogant, whiny asshole, not a hero. I hate how inconsistent the accents are; example: the king of Sparta has a Scottish accent, his brother has an English accent, and his wife has a French accent. Now I could get behind the idea that Spartans are the Scottish of the Greeks, but Helen ain't French.

Still, for the most part, the movie looks good and I find myself watching it every few years because maybe one day it'll be a great movie rather than a disappointment.