Wolfgang Peterson’s film Troy is based on the Trojan Wars that took place in Greece thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, there is too much story to fit into a two hour and forty-five-minute film, but overall it condenses the most important parts into an engaging film. The film starts with introducing us to Achilles (Brad Pitt), who is a highly-skilled Greek warrior known to be nearly invincible in every way. Achilles’ only motive in the world is to have his name remembered throughout the ages. Achilles resents answering to the Greek King Agamemnon (Brian Cox), who sees Achilles as a threat to his empire. Although he despises Achilles, he knows how important Achilles is in order to achieve victories. In the opening scene, we get to see the Achilles take on a seven-foot-tall warrior and take him down with one swing of his sword.
The next two stars of the movie are the two princes of Troy, Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Orlando Bloom). The two are on a diplomatic mission to sign a peace treaty with the king of Sparta Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). Following Greek mythology, Paris falls in love with Sparta’s queen, Helen (Diane Kruger) and takes her back to Troy which initiates the war. After negotiations, Paris sneaks Helen onto the Trojan’s ship and they sail back to Troy. Not too long later Menelaus discovers this and goes to his brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox), who rules over most of Greece, to start what becomes known as the Trojan Wars.
Some may argue that it’s hard to make a battle exciting when the ending is already known (those who are aware of the historical context), but I disagree. I was completely engaged during all of the battle scenes. The war begins and one thousand ships are deployed to attack Troy and reclaim Helen, and in the front of the fleet is Achilles’s ship. The opening scene didn’t show us enough of how strong the mighty Achilles really is, now we get to see him, and his fifty men take on hundreds of Trojans. In single combat, Achilles has a distinctive fighting style. He prefers the long run-up and then leaps into the air to slay his enemy, as seen throughout several parts of the movie.
The Greeks arrive at Troy and attack the walled city, lead by Achilles who takes the beach of Troy with just fifty men. Throughout the film and just as most Greeks did back then, we see Greeks make many tributes to the Gods. One of the tributes that the Trojans made was a temple and a large beautiful statue of the sun god Apollo. After Achilles’s victory he cuts off the head of the statue, which was his way of saying the gods don’t decide fate, we do. Later before the two major armies clash, Paris and Menelaus have a single combat duel and the winner gets to keep Helen. The camera zooms out on the battlefield to show the two massive armies standing and watching as two men face off. Orlando Bloom is just coming off the successful Lord of the Rings movies, where he plays as Legolas, a powerful elven warrior. In this case, however, we see the exact opposite of a warrior and that is a frightened little boy who looked like he had never held a sword in his life.
Later in the movie Achilles and Hector finally have the showdown we have all been waiting for. The two most powerful warriors in all of Greece face off in front of the great wall of Troy. Hector gives Achilles his toughest battle he has ever faced, but even Hector is not good enough to defeat Achilles. Achilles defeats Hector and from that point on the Greek army has all the advantage they could ever need. After the loss of Hector, the film then portrays the famous Trojan Horse scene (those who know the historical context know). The plan was created by Odysseus according to history, but they do not show the formation of the plan in the film. Then just like most movies of this nature (Gladiator), the main character meets his end after he finally finds peace. The mighty Achilles meets his end by the hands of Paris, to avenge his fallen brother Hector.
Despite some shortcomings, there were many things I enjoyed about Troy. I may be a little biased because I enjoy historically based movies, but I believe they did a good job considering how little is known about the real Troy. Not much is known about the Trojan Wars except little pieces of history that have been found on archeological digs. The goal of this movie was to portray a significant part of ancient Greek culture based on what we currently know about the Trojan Wars. I found myself closely watching and listening more often than not but considering it is three hours, the average viewer may deserve a little more to keep them interested. Audiences should get the impressions that Ancient Greece was beautiful in terms of climate, architecture, and art, but was also a time of war, sickness, and pettiness. If you are looking for a love story with plenty of character development this is not the film for you. The best historical based films work when both visual and emotional qualities. As I stated already the goal of the film was to portray the Trojan Wars to the best of their ability, so it’s understandable that they didn’t spend a great amount of time on character development. Peterson nailed it when it comes to battle scenes but fell short when it comes to believable characters.
