Thursday, May 13, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Troy: Homer erotic

Not even a miscast Brad Pitt, sans underwear, can fill out the hollow Troy

By Jeannette Catsoulis

He had only 20 minutes of screen time in Thelma & Louise, but he wisely used them to give Geena Davis her first orgasm. And if Brad Pitt had only stuck to pleasing women, in his casually roguish way, he might have avoided a career riddled with bizarre missteps (Seven Years in Tibet, The Dark Side of the Sun) and incomprehensible duds (Kalifornia, Meet Joe Black). It's a lesson he is still learning: For Troy, Pitt gave up smoking and buffed himself to superhero dimensions to play Achilles the warrior when anyone could see he was born to play Paris the seducer.

The role might have been a thankless one--Paris is, after all, a mealy-mouthed coward--but Pitt, adept at creating trouble then dancing away from it, would have given him a redemptive, light-footed charm. At the very least, we would have understood Helen's adoration. Instead, we get Orlando Bloom, ringleted and doe-eyed and slender as a young girl. His Paris is inexpressive and unconvincingly heterosexual, a petulant baby who sneaks Helen (Diane Kruger) aboard his ship, then refuses to return her to her husband, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson)--even when faced with the destruction of his homeland and the ruin of his father, King Priam (Peter O'Toole). Selfish as a teenager, Paris bolts from a duel with Menelaus to wrap himself around the substantial legs of big brother Hector (Hulk's Eric Bana), who wriggles with embarrassment. The idea of any woman keeping Paris around for anything other than help with her fabric choices seems utterly preposterous.

But Troy--contrary to its advertising--isn't about a war fought for love (at least not the romantic sort). Paris and Helen may have started the ball limply rolling, but the impulses that keep it in motion are far more ancient and infinitely more indelible: greed and power and pride and family loyalty. All of these mean something to Achilles, though he takes great pains to pretend they don't; and credit must be given to director Wolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm) and writer David Benioff (25th Hour) for fashioning an authentic Greek hero (as opposed to the Hollywood variety). Troubled, arrogant, irritable and bossy, he's a warrior who sighs when called to fight and a lover not above grabbing his woman by the throat and shaking her like a dog. Early in the movie, as two opposing armies stand restlessly in the blazing sun, an exasperated Agamemnon (Brian Cox) screams "Where is Achilles?" Taking off like a bloodhound on the scent, the camera zooms through the ranks and into a tent where our hero lies entwined with more than one set of naked female limbs. As he grumpily throws on his helmet and trudges to war, we get the feeling this is a guy who often disdains both punctuality and underwear.

Desperately keeping pace, James Horner's score balloons and deflates in time to Achilles' nervous system. In battle, Achilles has a signature move: casually strolling past an opponent, he suddenly leaps into the air, twists his body, and stabs. Like Pitt's best performances, the gesture has a lethal nonchalance--each time he does it the whole movie seems to lift. But it's not enough to support a production drowning in $200 million worth of stone and sand and metal. And it's not enough to protect Pitt from the combined weight of O'Toole and Cox, actors who know that menace resides in the lower registers. Cox plays Agamemnon as a man rotting with greed, his venality expressed in every roughened syllable; while O'Toole's gaunt and haunted dignity binds the film in ways Achilles' grandiose hollering could never achieve. The scene where Priam begs Achilles for Hector's body is heartbreaking beyond any expectation of script or camera.

Yet for all its expensive accoutrements, Troy has a pale, washed-out look with poorly integrated digital sequences. Depth of field is still a major problem with CGI, and the film never succeeds in creating a fully realized world. (There were times when I expected the camera to swing accidentally and reveal a catering tent filled with scratching extras). Troy is ultimately a valiant but doomed affair, as carefully constructed--and as hollow--as the Trojan Horse itself.