Don’t bother seeing boring, bombastic ‘Troy’
After suffering through “The Alamo,” I was hoping that was the only excruciatingly tedious and awful historical epic I’d have to sit through this year. I was wrong. I’d forgotten about “Troy,” a nearly three-hour exercise in cinematic badness that would make Ed Wood spin in his grave.
If you thought “The Iliad” was boring to read in high school, just wait until you see it on the big screen. After an hour of bad dialogue, fake British accents, a wretchedly bombastic and pretentious score and a plodding pace, you’ll want to carve your own Trojan Horse — if only to escape this assault on your senses and to grab some shut-eye.
The film takes place in the 12th century B.C. Paris of Troy (Orlando Bloom) and his brother Hector (Eric Bana) are on a peace mission to Sparta. While Hector is negotiating a peace settlement, Paris falls in puppy love with Helen (Diane Kruger), the trophy wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson).
Paris promptly whisks Helen back to the walled city of Troy.
Menelaus tells his brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox) about all this, and Aggie decides to use it as a pretense to attack and claim Troy for himself. And to lead his army, Agamemnon appoints the nigh-invulnerable Achilles (Brad Pitt).
For the entire movie, Brad Pitt speaks in an affected accent that sounds vaguely British, which is a movie star’s way of saying, “I may not have been classically trained, but I can sound like it.”
He might have gotten away with it if Peter O’Toole hadn’t been cast. In one small scene with Pitt, O’Toole rises above the awful dialogue given to him and delivers the most powerful performance of the film. And in that brief, shining moment you will see what a failure “Troy” is as a film and all it could have been had director Wolfgang Petersen cast actors instead of movie stars and super models.
GRADE: D