Achilles has defeated Priam's son Hector in hand-to-hand combat before the walls of Troy, and dragged his body back to camp behind his chariot. He plays old King Priam of Troy, who at night ventures outside his walls and into the enemy camp, surprising Achilles in his tent. The best scene in the movie has Peter O'Toole creating an island of drama and emotion in the middle of all that plodding dialogue. Of course, "Elektra" wouldn't work for a multiplex audience, but then maybe it shouldn't. Great films like Michael Cacoyannis' " Elektra," about the murder of Agamemnon after the Trojan War, know that and use a stark dramatic approach that is deliberately stylized. What happens in Greek myth cannot happen between psychologically plausible characters.
Pitt is modern, nuanced, introspective he brings complexity to a role where it is not required.īy treating Achilles and the other characters as if they were human, instead of the larger-than-life creations of Greek myth, director Wolfgang Petersen miscalculates. Say what you will about Charlton Heston and Victor Mature, but one good way to carry off a sword-and-sandal epic is to be filmed by a camera down around your knees, while you intone quasi-formal prose in a heroic baritone. Pitt is a good actor and a handsome man, and he worked out for six months to get buff for the role, but Achilles is not a character he inhabits comfortably. So dramatic is that development that the movie shows perhaps 100,000 men in hand-to-hand combat, and then completely forgets them in order to focus on the Patroclus battle scene, with everybody standing around like during a fight on the playground. Patroclus, who looks a little like Achilles, wears his helmet and armor to fool the enemy, and until the helmet is removed everyone thinks that Achilles has been slain. He thinks Agamemnon is a poor leader with bad strategy and doesn't really get worked up until his beloved cousin Patroclus ( Garrett Hedlund) is killed in battle. He mopes on the flanks of the Greek army with his own independent band of fighters, carrying out a separate diplomatic policy, kind of like Ollie North. Heroes are not introspective in Greek drama, they do not have second thoughts, and they are not conflicted.Īchilles is all of these things. If Achilles was anything, he was a man who believed his own press releases. Chief among their leaders is Achilles, said to be the greatest warrior of all time, but played by Brad Pitt as if he doesn't believe it. The seduction of Helen is the curtain-raiser for the main story, which involves vast Greek armies laying siege to the impenetrable city.
If you believe Helen of Troy could actually tell Paris anything remotely like that, you will probably also agree that the second night he slipped into her boudoir, she told him, "Last night was a mistake." I want a man I can grow old with." Not in Greek myth, you don't. Is it because her loins throb with passion for a hero? No, because she tells him: "I don't want a hero. What the movie doesn't explain is why Helen would leave with Paris after an acquaintanceship of a few nights. This action understandably annoys Helen's husband, Menelaus ( Brendan Gleeson), not to mention Paris' brother Hector ( Eric Bana), who points out, quite correctly, that when you visit a king on a peace mission, it is counterproductive to leave with his wife.
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