Troy

Cliches abound, but no more than in Return of the King a year earlier, and anyway the archetype is grand. This film seems like a success. It does about as much as it can on such a basic premise for making a movie, and turns out sufficiently entertaining. I have a weak spot for history and demigods, so I give Troy a pass. For similar reasons I love the Tolkien movies, which this one certainly ripped. It's comforting I can detect the mediocrity of Troy, whereas I'm accustomed to such selectivity with movies, and to such other reasons for watching something than quality, I often doubt my critical abilities. I enjoyed Troy, but it didn't fool me. With cliches worthy of PG-13, I can never call this filmmaking "inspired" -- but again, Peter Jackson cuts a thousand corners. But his virtue is the corners he doesn't cut, which explain and justify the cliches: you can't have all 540 minutes strong, and you'll never say he lacks passion. Troy lacks passion in starkest contrast to its high drama. There's no way the act(or/ress) who played Hector's wife was passionate about her pathetic certainly-man-written character. But hell was she dramatic! If you saw the Tolkien movies and Troy, in 2004 you had the lowest opinion of Orlando Bloom. Anyway Jackson has some Tolkien dialogue to work with. Troy probably steals none of that from Homer. Yet I can't say it's poorly-written, necessarily. It's just basic as hell. It's such a movie. I'm sorry all these kids went to film school to learn how to write like this. They'd never make it in the history of literature. I guess they haven't dented the history of cinema either. But the writing is not bad -- just basic. Like I said, Troy taps me where I'm keen, so I don't hate it. I think I could have written it better, with just a little schooling on the fundamentals. The Jackson movies had some bad writing, beside some perfection. Troy is an all-around C.

I enjoyed it. I liked the Achilles v. Hector scene, especially for the tense bongos. I liked the fighting, the glory of these figures, the grandeur. I loved wise Odysseus -- I don't know why. A great warrior and a wise and noble king -- like Aragorn, but Boromir. I could have used a cheesy allusion at the end to Odysseus's adventure to come. I like all of the conversation on values: Hector says "honor the gods, love your woman, defend your country" or similar; others variously worship conquest, name recognition, romance, filial piety, victory, family, deities, humanism, courage.... and I believe a major victory of the script is each of these is compellingly argued! Each argument on values (among many) was actually pretty interesting for me, with the power to swing my favor between interlocutors. This is why I'm a sucker for genres like this: I love thinking about fundamental values this way. Troy proved fairly interesting on those lines, though hardly unexpected. I don't think it was a bad movie. Just about as entertaining as something so uninspired could be. Good thing it was R-rated, to push the sensory buttons a little.