By golly, if I’m not wavering on the Iraq war, I sure as heck am not budging on the Trojan war–or rather on Troy, the Wolfgang Peterson movie.
Alas, the Other Charlotte’s opinion of the latest evocation of Homer’s epic was more wine-dark sea and less rosy-fingered dawn than mine.
Andrew Stuttaford of National Review is more in the TOC camp, though he does acknowledge that the battle scenes were super:
“The script is more wooden than the horse,” wrote Stuttaford; “the special effects lack the grandeur we have come to expect in our epics and Troy’s gimcrack Troy looks like Rome/Babylon/Athens as re-imagined for one of Las Vegas’ lesser casinos. And here’s something else. One thing those ancients could do was, you know, sculpt. Well, the statues in Petersen’s Troy look as if a blind man had carved them with a cheese grater, so much so that when they toppled (a moment of tragedy) it was difficult not to cheer. On the credit side, the battle sequences themselves are fine, if not Zulu, LOTR, or Private Ryan; but it is only the marvelously shot (and performed) hand-to-hand combat between Achilles and Hector that, despite its odd blend of Shaolin and Sparta, really manages to grip.”