Films billed as epic rarely live up to the hype. It’s hardly surprising then that Troy is fairly terrible. Not absolutely dire, but there is nothing to make the viewer care. Or indeed to make this reviewer give much more than a list of what went wrong:
- The prologue. Everything important from this introductory text was in the film. Why bother?
- Battle Scenes. Lacking a certain amount of visceral imagery, a lot of the huge battles looked like swords under the arms affairs (particularly the first beach assault at Troy). It was difficult to get a real sense of scale in most battles.
- Brad Pitt. Now, many years ago, I thought the boy Pitt was just eye candy for the ladies (no, never confused), but his performances in many films since then have convinced me he is an excellent actor. Why, then, this dire souless performance? Dry, lacking personality, painful.
- Orlando Bloom. Now, in the short time since he first appeared, I’ve thought that Bloom was talentless. I still do. Who told him he was an actor anyway? He gives the same performance he did in Pirates Of The Caribbean.
- The direction. Cuts don’t go together properly, lazy use of cityscape panoramas, CG inserts. Trying to be epic for the sake of it, rather than because the material is there to warrant it (not that the Trojan War wasn’t epic, just that this interpretation is far from it).
Eric Bana, however, really showed off how skilled he is; an excellent actor with a bright future. The rest is dead weight.