I made a lot of sacrifices to watch Troy: I waited in line for countless hours to get tickets, I waited another three hours to get into Wheeler Auditorium, and I endured the freezing cold for an hour after someone pulled a fire-alarm during the movie. I only made these sacrifices because I believed Troy would be an excellent movie.
I was utterly disappointed.
I won’t say that movie was bad. It wasn’t. It’s just that there were too many factors that turned an excellent story into an average film.
First, the acting was horrible. Brad Pitt‘s and Orlando Bloom‘s characters didn’t seem real; they both were as mechanical as robots. The acting was so bad that many people in the audience would burst out laughing when Pitt tried to show compassion or when Bloom tried to exhibit confidence. Bloom’s boyish looks just weren’t appropriate.
Secondly, the dialogue was dry and lacking. There was no substance to any of it. The screenwriter should just be shot. There were many crucial instances when the actors had nothing to say; instead of speaking, they would just stare off into the distance. The best example of this was when Achilles’ mother told her son that he would die if he went to Troy. Instead of responding with emotion, Achilles (Pitt) just turned his head towards the sea.
The CGI was sub par. The battle scenes would have been realistic if this movie was filmed 10 years ago. After watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the battles in Troy seemed fake. The camera-work was also bad. It seemed as if the director wanted to compensate for the pitiful battle scenes by constantly moving the camera around. Bad idea.
Finally, the movie was overdrawn. Some scenes just broke the flow of the story. They could have been easily omitted without any effect upon the final movie. At 163 minutes, watching Troy requires a bit of endurance.
I guess the only redeeming quality of the movie was the storyline. I haven’t read Homer’s Iliad in a long time, so I won’t comment on the accuracy of the movie. But, if nothing else, the story was interesting.
My Ticket:
