Troy

Action, Adventure, Drama, Romance, War

Brad Pitt	Achilles
Orlando Bloom	Paris of Troy
Julian Glover	Triopas
Brian Cox	Agamemnon
Nathan Jones	Boagrius
Adoni Maropis	Agamemnon's Officer
Jacob Smith	Messenger Boy
John Shrapnel	Nestor
Brendan Gleeson	Menelaus
Diane Kruger	Helen
Eric Bana	Hector
Sean Bean	Odysseus
Saffron Burrows	Andromache
Peter O'Toole	Priam of Troy
Julie Christie	Thetis

Director	Wolfgang Petersen
Producer	Wolfgang Petersen; Diana Rathbun
Writer	Homer; David Benioff

There are many reasons to recommend Troy as a good ol' fashioned Hollywood epic, especially if you've never read Homer's The Iliad. Dispensing with Greek gods altogether, this earnestly massive production (budgeted at upwards of $200 million) will surely offend historians and devoted students of the classics. But there's politics aplenty in the grand-scale war that erupts when Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) makes off with Helen (blandly beautiful German model Diane Kruger), wife of Spartan ruler Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), whose brother, the Greek king Agamemnon (Brian Cox) prods him into enraged retaliation. Greek warrior Achilles (Brad Pitt) brings lethal force to his battles (and there are many of them, mostly impressive), and his Trojan counterpart, Paris's brother Hector (Eric Bana), adds even more buffed-up beefcake to a film so chock-full o' hunks that there's barely room for Peter O'Toole (doing fine work as Trojan king Priam) and even less for Julie Christie, appearing ever-so-briefly as Achilles's melancholy mother. The drama is nearly as arid as the sun-baked locations (Mexico and Malta) that stand in for the Aegean coast, and many critics suggested that Pitt (who valiantly tries to give Achilles some tormented dimension) was simply miscast. But when you consider that Wolfgang Petersen also made The Perfect Storm, there's nothing wrong with enjoying Troy as a semi-guilty pleasure with a touch of ancient class. --Jeff Shannon