Unwept, unhonour’d, uninterr’d he lies!

NOTE: I started this entry last Monday, but just got around to finishing it. Originally it was titled, "Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war" from Shakespeare's Julius Ceaser. But since this is a post about the movie Troy, I figured the quote from the Iliad would be a bit more appropriate and appropos.

Last weekend my cousin Dean and I went to see Troy - all 2 hours and 42 minutes of it. Actually, that's the official running time, which I'm pretty sure includes the end credits, for which I rarely stay unless there is some minor actor in the movie that I recognize but can't recall their name, in which case I'll stay through the actor credits. But really, do I actually care who the third and fourth grips are or who provided craft services? No. So, given the scope of the movie and the fact that anyone who is even remotely connected with the movie now gets screen credit (I'm guessing even the guy who empties the Port-O-Lets is credited, but as something more grandiose than shit dumper), we can probably subtract about 20 minutes from the total. Still 2 hours and 20 minutes is nothing to sneeze at.

If you are going to see Troy, you may want to stop reading now, since I'm not a movie critic schooled in the art of not giving too much of the plot away. Also, if you are not familiar with the general story of the Trojan War, I would suggest reading John Bliss's article The Agony and The Iliad.

I must say that I walked out of the movie a bit...Well, I don't know. The acting was okay, the battle scenes spectacular, and just about everything was working but something was amiss. I think there were actually a couple of things. First, I didn't know who I was supposed to like in this movie or even what side I was supposed to be rooting for. Both of the main characters were anti-heros. Achilles (Brad Pitt) despises Agamemnon, King of the Greeks, and only goes on the Trojan expedition so that he will be remembered through the ages while Paris (Orlando Bloom) is a naive coward who, as you would expect, finds redemption for his cowardice late in the final reel. About the only character that you have any real feeling for is Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors who, unfortunately for the audience dies about two-thirds through the movie.

Another thing that bothered me was that according to Wolfgang Petersen's telling the whole war took place in about 17 days - 12 of which there was no fighting so that the Trojans could mourn the death of Hector. Contrast that to the 10 or 12 years over which the war is supposed to have taken. Which leads to something that has always made me curious. There were somewhere between 1000 and 1200 Greek ships each of which carried about 50 men. That's at most 60,000 men. How does one carry on a 10 year war with only 60,000 men? Also, how did the city of Troy manage to survive a siege that long without being starved out? It's not as if the Trojans could just order out Chinese every night.

Some of you may know that I am a huge fan of the tracking crane shoot. A really big fan. I think that they can reveal more about a situation in a single shot than 10 pages of dialogue. If you have ever seen the movie Gone With the Wind and can recall the scene at the train depot where Scarlett is tending to the Confederate wounded, we start close on Scarlett with a single soldier and slowly pull back and up to reveal that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of wounded. This scene was the first time that I noticed the tracking crane shot and how effective it can be. Another example that comes to mind are the scene in Henry V after the Battle of Agincourt when Henry walks across the battlefield carrying a page that was killed

All of that was just lead into this...Once the Greeks are underway, we see medium shot of Achilles standing at the prow of his ship, some words are exchanged with one of his crew and then we pull back and up to reveal the extent of the Greek fleet. This would have been even more effective if James Cameron hadn't had almost exactly the same shot in Titanic. About the only thing missing was Achilles crying out, "I'm the king of the world" a la Jack Dawson.

Bottom line...eh. I'd still recommend seeing it, even if only to have a reason to go someplace well air-conditioned in the heat of summer.

Coming Attractions
Okay, one summer "blockbuster" down, several more to go. Here is the current list of movies that I'm waiting to see.

Van Helsing
The Day After Tomorrow
Okay both of these are already out, I just haven't gotten around to seeing them. Perhaps I'll wait for them to play the cheap theater.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - June 4
The Chronicles of Riddick - June 11
Spider-Man 2 - July 2
I, Robot - July 16
The Bourne Supremacy - July 23
Catwoman - July 23
Thunderbirds - July 30
Alien vs. Predator - August 13

I'm sure that I'll see trailers for some other movies that will intrigue me enough to want to see them, but these are the majors one's for right now. There is one movie that I will not be seeing at the theater, on Pay-Per-View, on network TV, or as an in-flight movie, if I have anything to say about it...Garfield: The Movie.