I had been putting off watching Troy for a long time because of a natural suspicion towards hype. With such lowered expectations, it turned out to be not bad at all. Overlooking the occasional bodybuilder posing and terrible acting by Brad Pitt (as in the delivery of “Play your tricks on me, but not on my cousin” – not very easy to mess up, huh?) and the severely single dimensional characters, it is surprisingly passable. The latter is harder to ignore but then, the movie does not claim to be anything out of the ordinary. On the plus side are the prettily choreographed sword fights, the actress who plays Hector’s wife and Eric Bana, who scores with his gentle, brave, careworn, crown prince. Sean Bean’s Odysseus and Orlando Bloom’s Paris deserve mention too. Odysseus’s sad eyes and friendly laughter make Achilles look like a make-believe human being, and his closing lines add a splendor that the movie otherwise lacks. Bloom, whose dialogue delivery is severely limited to a single intonation, expression and gesture, has played the despicable role of Paris without forcing the audience to loathe him, thanks to the smart scripting of the weak-spirited, dumb, young Paris as a plain, spoilt prince.
The only time when the dialogue took an abrupt turn and became memorable was when Achilles says “The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.”.
On the whole, I wrote a review because of this – the only aspect of the movie that impressed me – the hints that seem to suggest, “This is what haunted these men; these men who lived, loved and died for glory. This is how and why the myths were born. Paris was “spirited away” by Aphrodite because he ran from the battlefield. Achilles’ is physically invulnerable everywhere except at his heel because, he was so damned skilled and marvelous as a warrior, threw spears and wielded swords like a god, and died when a poisoned arrow pierced his heel, when he was not engaged in battle. Achilles’ mother was a nymph because, she was rumored to be a goddess when he was alive.” And so on.