Almost Famous

death or glory: Hector (Eric Bana) prepares to kill for posterity.

In Troy, warriors battle for their 15 minutes.

by Cindy Fuchs

In Troy, war is all about reputation. Though kings and soldiers say they fight for property or power, nation, family or morality, at bottom, the cost and the payoff are the same: a place in history. Some 3,200 years ago, when Wolfgang Petersen’s movie begins, the great and cocky warrior Achilles (a very buff, very brown Brad Pitt) is worrying over just that. An exceptionally skilled and agile fighter, Achilles annoys ambitious King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) precisely because he’s more concerned with his own name than the king’s. He first appears supine and naked in his tent, sleeping off an evening spent with two anonymous lovelies. Summoned to beat down a representative of yet another kingdom Agamemnon seeks to claim, Achilles takes his time donning his armor and riding off to perform spectacular one-on-one battle. Agamemnon is petulant as he waits on his best and most unruly combatant: "Of all the warlords loved by the gods," he mutters, "I hate him the most!" And with that, Achilles demonstrates what makes him so irritating and indispensable, dispatching his mighty-seeming opponent with athletic, slow-motioned ease.

The son of a goddess, Thetis (Julie Christie), and lusted after by Athena (who doesn't show up here, as the film omits all of Homer's bickering gods), Achilles is gifted with one sort of immortality, save for the famous heel (referenced only in a brief close-up when he dies, some 160 minutes after his introduction). But he's more interested in another sort. Indeed, he pep-talks his super-loyal men, the Myrmidons, by pointing his sword at them and declaring that immortality awaits them on the battlefield: "Take it! It's yours!"

The battlefield that takes up most of the film is, of course, Troy, where the stunning Greek queen Helen (dull Diane Kruger) has arrived with her lover, craven but pretty Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom). The problem is that she's left behind her churlish husband, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). While he wants to get her back so he can kill her himself ("with my bare hands!"), his brother Agamemnon wants to settle a beef with Troy's King Priam (Peter O'Toole, serving the function as Richard Harris in Gladiator, the weary elder who embodies the pain of forever-war). And so the brothers sail forth with their 1,000 ships, each sustained by his own obviously fictional rationale for war.

Achilles has his own reasons to go along. Essentially a leader of mercenaries (his Myrmidons might also be termed "private contractors"; they fight and loot, with no particular allegiance to Greece or a king), he's not interested in Helen or Troy per se. Cajoled by Agamemnon's boy Odysseus (Sean Bean), he's convinced by his all-seeing mom. When she says he can stay home and father a lineage to remember him, or go to Troy and achieve eternal fame, he looks offscreen, his eyes narrowing. His vision, the film proposes, is at once expansive and limited: He'll forgo the loving wife and kids and cut straight to the enduring celebrity.

His vision is also, apparently, fated. "Born to end lives," he admits no responsibility for his actions or the awful pain he causes victims or their survivors, until Troy. Here, he meets sad and weary Priam (who argues that mutual respect between enemies is a worthy end) and Trojan priestess Briseis (Rose Byrne); after one night with her (a Greek hostage he decides to champion, if only to aggravate Agamemnon), he emerges from his tent all smiley and sweet, imagining that the happy-family version of his future isn't so bad after all.

Such a dream of "peace" is fleeting, of course, for Achilles just can't keep his blue eyes averted from the prize of stardom. He's goaded to behave badly when Paris' brother Hector (Eric Bana), the film's most undeniably noble hero, complete with tremulous wife (Saffron Burrows) and baby boy, accidentally kills Achilles' bland cousin. The showdown between Achilles and Hector is the film's liveliest; while the spectacle of the other battles involving thousands of bodies in stunt-and-CGI-ed motion is enhanced by close-ups of thrusts, penetrations, and whomps, it's hardly emotionally engaging. Achilles invites his opponent to step outside Troy's legendary walls, and the resulting fight is gorgeously choreographed. As they toss off their helmets and throw themselves at one another, the camera crawls and swoops around them, as if they're Kirk and Spock in some kind of hyper-realized "Amok Time."

While this scene recalls the visual thrills of Gladiator, the movie that might be blamed for the spate of mytho-historical "epics," it also reveals what's troubling about current efforts to update the genre. The shock-and-awe spectacle becomes its own end. Even as the Trojans hurling giant fireballs at the Greek encampment or the Greek soldiers sliding out of the Trojan Horse at night make for impressive effects, Troy repeatedly lapses into episodic, uncompelling storytelling and broadly stereotyped characters.

Certainly, such results might derive from the source; the Illiad is comprised of episodes and archetypes. But Homer's tales are also grand in theme and instruction. Achilles' choice, in the end, is a function of his weakness, selfishness and position caught between gods. In Troy, he's let off that hook, remembered as much for his perfect naked ass and righteous exploits to save his one true love as for his wrong-headed yearning for fame.

TROY

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen A Warner Bros. release Opens Friday at area theaters

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