 Troy (Cert 15, 165 mins)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Brendan Gleeson, Brian Cox and Peter O'Toole
Director: Wolfgang Peterson WHATEVER you might think of Charlton Heston, he was ideal casting in legendary roles like Moses and Ben Hur. How one wishes his younger self was playing the anguished hero Achilles in Troy. Brad Pitt may have sculpted his body to perfection - and we get to see it rather a lot - but he just does not have the emotional gravitas for Achilles. As director Wolfgang Peterson's film centres around Achilles in this quirky retelling of Homer's Illiad - and a bit of The Odyssey - the lacklustre performance is a fatal flaw. He is not the only problem. Diane Kruger as Helen of Troy looks attractive in a sort of hair commercial way but while she quivers her lip occasionally to show some feeling she is hardly the sort of woman whose face would launch 1,000 ships and start a war. Then there is Orlando Bloom as Paris, the man who steals her away from her husband and takes her off to Troy, thus starting the war between the Greeks and Trojans. He comes across as, not to put too fine a point on it, a wimp. It is left to Eric Bana as Troy's favourite son Hector to add anything approaching emotional depth to this epic. His performance delivers a real impact and his absence on screen takes the heart out of the film. Some British actors add their own skills to the supporting cast, generally beneath a beard. Brian Cox, perhaps the best actor in the film, is a fine Agamemnon, the king who leads the Greeks against Troy. But too often he has to play second fiddle to the preening Pitt. A gaunt-looking Peter O'Toole makes for a poignant King Priam, head of the Trojans and father to the eventually tragic Hector, Sean Bean (virtually unrecognisable beneath his bushy beard) makes a good fist of Odysseus and Brendan Gleeson is great as King Menelaus, the cuckolded husband of Helen. The plot follows traditional epic film rules with a battle scene followed by romantic dialogue and then another battle. It's all rather tedious. Cecil B de Mille used real actors for his crowd scenes but here Peterson is reduced to a handful of actors and computer graphics to make up the numbers. Sometimes this works pretty well but in Troy the graphics are all too obvious with the computerised soldiers all hazy in the background. The thousand ships sailing out to wreak revenge look like something out of an arcade game while the city of Troy could have come from a TV documentary digitally recreating a famous scene from the past. While the film follows the main thread of Homer's story there are numerous changes including the complete absence of the Gods who had such a controlling role in the original. The dialogue is often risible with characters for ever repeating that the Trojan War and its leading participants would be remembered for thousands of years (how did they know?). Alas, Peterson's film probably won't be remembered much past the summer season of blockbuster movies | 
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