Sunday Review

This is about the movie Troy, which opened last summer. It claims to have been inspired by Homer's Illiad. In my opinion, I don't think many of the cast or crew even read the Illiad. They just knew the basic story. As a movie it was okay, the battle scenes were not bad and all. However, if you want to see an accurate depiction of Illiad, don't go anywhere near this film. It uses battles that never occurred or were mentioned in the book, twisted several characters, and they left out way too many duels. Now I know no one is completely sure whether there ever was a 10-year siege of Troy by the Greeks. But if the movie says anything about being related to Illiad, then it should be faithful to the original story. First of all, the movie managed to turn an epic siege into a two week adventure. Yeah yeah I know 10 years is long, but you see, if you ever read the Illiad, you would first notice that it takes place in the last year. Most people know what happened in the beginning and all, and if they didn't, a voiceover together with some flashbacks would have sufficed. Another thing, I recently watched a commercial for it on TV, it showed an battle scene. When I saw it I wondered where else I saw the same tactics being used, oh yeah, Spartacus. The Trojans were all densely packed together while the Greeks charged them like an infuriated mob. If you took away the giant city of Troy itself, the battles would have seemed like those between Roman legions and Germanic armies. Last of all, why is the landing on the beach so much like in Saving Private Ryan, the whistling arrows sound so much like whistling machine gun bullets. Counting in accuracy in relation to original source, I give this a 2/5.