POETRY IN ACTIONHomer's epic on the Trojan War comes to fitful life in "Troy."
Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, inspired mostly by Homer's Iliad plus a smidge of Virgil's Aeneid, arrives in an impressive package. But as with the Trojan horse, inside there's a rude surprise.Rattling around this film, with its commanding performances by Peter O'Toole as Priam of Troy and Eric Bana as his warrior son, Hector, is a bizarre turn by the bronzed Brad Pitt. He plays their Greek adversary, Achilles, like a surfer dude trolling the Aegean for the perfect wave.
Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, inspired mostly by Homer's Iliad plus a smidge of Virgil's Aeneid, arrives in an impressive package. But as with the Trojan horse, inside there's a rude surprise.
Rattling around this film, with its commanding performances by Peter O'Toole as Priam of Troy and Eric Bana as his warrior son, Hector, is a bizarre turn by the bronzed Brad Pitt. He plays their Greek adversary, Achilles, like a surfer dude trolling the Aegean for the perfect wave.
Just because Pitt is a hair actor, tossing highlighted tresses for emphasis, doesn't mean he's a bad actor. Physically, he's a superb specimen, crouching and then pouncing on his enemy in battle like a hero painted on a classical urn. This, even though his biceps swell from matchstick-slim to pneumatic-pumped from one scene to the next.
But when Pitt opens his mouth, the voice that emerges is prairie-flat, lacking the thunder-on-the-palisades sweep and resonance of O'Toole and Bana. When Pitt speaks, you don't think Troy; you think, as a friend says, Troy Donahue.
When the film focuses on the Trojans, it's splendid. But when Troy attempts to sort out the competing agendas of the Greeks, it drags.
Pitt's Achilles is a glory-greedy warrior glowering with contempt for the Greek leader, King Agamemnon (Brian Cox), who sends a thousand ships to the fortress city of Troy to reclaim his sister-in-law Helen (Diane Kruger), abducted by Priam's studly younger son, Paris (Orlando Bloom). I'm guessing it's because Petersen is German that the Greeks, especially the German-born Kruger, look more Dresden than Dardanelles.
Unlike Gladiator, which had an obvious hero and villain, Troy is ambivalent. The Trojans are hung up on love and family; the Greeks on property and posterity. Both sides are soberly aware that even if they win, they lose.
As Achilles' mother, Thetis (Julie Christie, stunning as ever), tells her brooding son: You can live a long, comfortable life at home and be forgotten by subsequent generations, or pass a short, glorious life in Troy and be the subject of summer movies three millennia after your death. (OK, she didn't say that bit, but you get the drift.) Certain in his invincibility - though the movie is vague about why he's vulnerable in that heel - Achilles chooses war over peace.
As written by David Benioff, Troy is a Cliff's Notes version of Homer - without the intervention of those gods and goddesses who dispatched thunderbolts and gusts of wind to guide the fates of the mortals. But as directed by Petersen, maker of Das Boot and Air Force One, its Sparta and Troy look like lived-in cities rather than computer-generated backdrops.
For the most part, the battles lack the gripping, one-on-one swordplay of Gladiator. But the sequence in which Achilles and his Myrmidons swarm the shore and arrange their dark shields as a mobile fortress to advance up the beach is a breathtaking passage in the choreography of war.
The heart of the film is O'Toole's Priam, a king proud that the walls of his fortress city have never been breached and prouder still of his sons, valiant Hector and lovestruck Paris.
Of course, Priam's pride does him in. The dramatic highlight of the film is the melancholy king's ain't-too-proud-to-beg entreaty to Achilles, into whose tent he has stolen, to return the body of his son for burial.
This stirring sequence, which should earn O'Toole the competitive Oscar he has thus far been denied, eloquently distills the film's view of battle. War is something that old men talk about and young men fight. And when grieving elders must bury their sons, war is something that disrupts the natural order.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
Troy
*** (out of four stars)
Produced by Wolfgang Petersen, Diana Rathbun and Colin Wilson, directed by Petersen, written by David Benioff, based on Homer's "Iliad," photography by Roger Pratt, music by James Horner, distributed by Warner Bros.
Running time: 2 hours, 40 mins.
Achilles. . . Brad Pitt
Hector. . . Eric Bana
Paris. . . Orlando Bloom
Helen. . . Diane Kruger
Priam. . . Peter O'Toole
Parent's guide: R (violence, discreet nudity, sexual candor)
Playing at: area theaters