TROY 2004, dir. Wolfgang Petersen 163 min. Rated R. Starring: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox. Review by Beth Baker

I’m going to go ahead and admit that my main reasons for seeing this movie were Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom. I’m also something of an ancient history buff, but I’m not going to try and kid myself. Okay I’m shallow, but I couldn’t resist the allure of hot guys in revealing armor. And on that count I was fully satisfied with Troy. Brad Pitt gets plenty of time to show off his buffed up body, and Orlando Bloom finally has the chance to show us some skin.

But I should have been careful what I asked for because in this movie I got way too much of it. I know Brad put a lot of work into bulking up for this movie, but his abs overshadow many fine actors.

Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Brendan Gleeson, Eric Bana (he was almost good enough to make me stop hating him for The Hulk), and Peter O’Toole (Phantoms was the bomb, yo) were all well cast and turned in better performances than this film required.

Less impressive were Orlando Bloom (finally proving to all the drooling girls and jealous boyfriends that he really isn’t more than a pretty face), Diane Kruger (she emotes two things during the entire movie: fear and sadness. What man wouldn’t want a fun girl like that?), and Brad Pitt. Now don’t get me wrong, he’s great actor, but he should never try to do an accent ever again. I guess he’s trying to do a British accent, but it’s so inconsistent that it’s laughable. I found myself just wanting him to shut up and be naked some more (hey, maybe that’s why he did it).

But this was not a movie meant to be carried by acting. When I saw the defending armies of Troy amassed in front of its walls I had to wonder, how the hell could that many people fit in there? I know it’s a big city, but damn! Was everyone in the army? And the Greeks may have brought a thousand ships, but apparently each of those ships must have held a thousand men for the size of their army to make any kind of sense. With a war of that kind of magnitude would the part of Achilles really have been that important? Another sticking point is the time frame the movie appears to take place in. According to history it was three years from the time that Paris and Helen took off before the Greeks got their shit together for the war. The war itself supposedly took place over ten years. Now I’m no mathematician, but that seems like a long time. Troy plays out as if this all happened in less time than it would have taken ancient Greeks to even think of building a big wooden horse to hide in.

Troy is huge and epic just as it should be, and I can ignore the glaring historical inaccuracies (which I won’t even get started on to save myself from sounding like a total loser). If you go into it expecting nothing more than pretty brain candy than you’ll be well satisfied. If you go into it looking for hot, scantily clad men you’ll be more than satisfied. But if you’re looking for a re-enactment of The Iliad you’ll be disappointed. I believe my exact word upon exiting the theater was “Ehh” accompanied by a shrug.