Troy

Troy is Hollywood's very free interpretation of Homer's "Iliad", and with that in mind you should not expect much of an intellectual challenge. Nor is there any reason to be surprised at the lack of poetry and complexity. All the highlights have been compressed into this blockbuster, which offers an abundance of spectacular battle scenes and romantic love scenes. On its own terms, then, the film works, even though it is unlikely to linger long in the memory. It takes more than this to ruin source material as entertaining as the "Iliad".

Prince Hector of the free city-state of Troy and his younger brother Prince Paris are on a peace mission to Menelaus, King of Sparta. As the brothers begin their journey home, all is peace and harmony, until it is revealed that Prince Paris has abducted Menelaus's much younger wife, the beautiful Helen, with her own consent. Menelaus wants his wife back, but most of all he wants revenge, so he asks his brother Agamemnon of Mycenae, the most powerful of all the rulers of the Greek city-states, for help. Agamemnon, Menelaus and a huge army, including the dreaded warrior Achilles and his men, set course for Troy, which has never fallen to any army, but this is an army of unprecedented size, so can Troy hold out in the long run?

It is unfortunate for the film that the love story that sets the whole affair in motion, namely the forbidden relationship between Prince Paris and the beautiful Helen, is such a pallid affair. Helen looks more like a Teuton than a Hellene, Paris is a weakling of the first order, and together they strike few sparks. The relationship between the warrior hero Achilles and the priestess Briseis is far steamier. As with Diane Krüger's Helen, however, one may wonder at the casting of an actor as Nordic-looking as Brad Pitt in the role of the Greek Achilles.