The Cynical Critic

Well. Here we are. It’s a Tuesday, and apparently it’s time for a blog entry. However, today is a bit different than normal. Since it is a Tuesday, that can only mean one thing: a crappy review. Yes, that’s right. Tuesdays, will now be known rather as “Terrible Tuesdays” in which I choose a movie/ game/ album at random, that for the most part is either overrated, over hyped, or just lain bad, and rip it to shreds for your enjoyment.

So then, now that we have the little introduction out of the way, what is to be the first movie to be reviewed on this less than perfect day? Hmm… Ah…. I know….

Eventually May rolled around and for the most part, the reviews were pretty shocking. Nearly every movie critic worth a thing all reviewed Troy pretty poorly. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it also flopped pretty bad on it’s opening weekend, scoring less than 50 million (as opposed to it’s ridiculous 180 million production total). For the most part all of the hype seemed to be utter crap, and as for myself I had lost much of the interest I originally had in it. As a result, I simply waited for it to come out on DVD. In hindsight, I am definitely glad I waited.

Finally, Troy was released on DVD at which point I went out and rented it. At first it didn’t really seem that bad. Sure, Troy seems like it doesn’t follow Homer’s stories at all. Sure, Orlando Bloom’s character was obnoxiously horrible. Sure, his acting is quite possibly horrendous, but at least I get to see Brad Pitt kill some guys. That’s cool right? … Right?
Oh God, I had no idea what was still to come.

So then about a fourth way into the movie (after Achilles takes the beach, and Agmamenon’s forces have arrived) I begin noticing something. Every time Brad Pitt says something, it kinda makes me mad. In fact, I kind of begin to notice that with Bloom’s character too. As I sit there and listen to Brad Pitt go on about how he’s not really on anyone’s side, and yet he clearly fights for one of the sides, I begin to realize why I hate it when he talks.

Brad Pitt is literally portraying Achilles as a royal a** hole. Seriously. Just looking at some of his quotes are making me mad right now.

“I want what all men want, I just want it more. You don’t need to fear me girl, you’re the only Trojan who can say that.”
“You won’t have eyes tonight. You won’t have ears or a tongue. you will wander the underworld blind, deaf and dumb and all the dead will know; This is Hector: the fool who thought he killed Achilles.”
“Before my time is done I will look down on your corpse and smile.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I understand a good character is suppose to invoke emotions in it’s readers/ viewers, but these are entirely the WRONG emotions being invoked for some one who is identified as being the main character. Not only do I hate Achilles at this point, I very much want to see him get whats coming to him. So thereby instead of rooting for main character at this point, I am doing the very opposite. I feel this is a prime example of bad writing, or at least bad directing. That being said, I think it’s fine to have Pitt play Achilles in the way that he did, however do NOT make him the main focus in the movie.

Another pretty big gripe I had with this movie was Bloom’s character. Now, I’d like to think he portrayed Paris fairly accurate, but it’s simply the fact that his acting is found to be quite lacking. I found that most of the characters were pretty cliche’d by the end of the movie, but Paris exceeded all of the other character exponentially. Some of his lines are downright laughable, especially the ones when he is talking to Helen, “I’ll hunt deer and rabbit, we can live off the land!”. Simply pathetic.

Other problems I saw with this movie were the camera shots and angles. It should be pretty much understood by now that when you have a movie with MASSIVE landscapes, and MASSIVE armies using long swooping shots to let the viewer get the full picture are a must. Too bad Troy doesn’t really do this at all. Instead, we the viewer never really get the big picture, and as a result everything feels scale down.

An element in this movie that severely pisses me off, is the unnecessary addition of the relationship between Achilles and Briseis. I really hate the fact that Achilles throughout the entire filmed is portrayed as cold merciless killer, but then by chance he meets Briseis, and suddenly she seems to change him over night. This entire addition is almost laughable, and really gives the movie a “cheesy Hollywood” feel. It almost seems like in order to appeal to a wider crowd, the relationship between Briseis and Achilles was added. This accounts for just one of the many, cliche’d and “Hollywood-ized” aspects of this film.

In the end I was happy Troy was over, and as a result felt that I had wasted two hours of my life.

Overall, Troy isn’t a terrible movie, but it certainly fails to deliver. That being said, for something that promised so much, and could have truly blown everyone away, we were instead left with a generic, cheesy, overall shallow movie, that really leaves you feeling empty and kinda mad.

I give Troy a 6 on the Crap-0-Meter (the higher the number, the worse the film is).