Epic ‘Troy’ fights no new battles

In theaters

TROY. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, written by David Benioff, 162 minutes, rated R.

Wolfgang Petersen’s $200 million blockbuster-hopeful, “Troy,” a sword-and-sandal epic inspired by Homer’s “Iliad” and key elements of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” may star Brad Pitt in the lead, but he’s no reason to see the film. Instead, it’s Australian-born Eric Bana (“Hulk”) who rises from the film’s blood, severed limbs and ashes to deliver a performance that’s so confident, it galvanizes an otherwise lightweight movie undeserving of its 21/2-hour running time.

Based on a screenplay by David Benioff, the film is sandbagged by a been-there, seen-that feel, one especially heightened due to years of other movies whose stories also were centered around major battle scenes – “The Alamo,” “The Patriot,” “Gladiator,” “Braveheart” and the “Lord of the Rings” series chief among them.

“Troy” tries to mount interest in its battles, but Petersen (“Das Boot”) shoots them in such tight, claustrophobic close-up, all scale is lost just when it’s needed most.

The chaos of war is achieved here, but what’s missing is an emotional connection to the death that hovers over it. This is one of the most ambivalent war movies Hollywood has produced, with the viewer not always clear for whom to root. The result is a great-looking yet curiously passionless movie that lacks personality and heart.

The film stars Pitt as Achilles, the Greek warrior demigod who in this movie looks like Fabio by way of Goldilocks. With his plump, dewy lips and impossibly golden curls, some might confuse this Achilles for Helen if Pitt weren’t so newly buff.

As the film begins, Helen (Diane Kruger) has caused more than her share of trouble. After leaving her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta (Brendan Gleeson), for the likes of Paris (Orlando Bloom), cowardly son of Troy’s King Priam (Peter O’Toole), King Agamemnon of the Mycenaeans (Brian Cox) sends his troops to conquer Troy.

He doesn’t do so out of loyalty to his brother, Menelaus, though that is how he makes it appear. Instead, he does so because Helen’s betrayal has given him an excuse to finally take over Troy, even if it means the slaughtering of thousands of his own men.

It’s Bana’s Prince Hector who leads Troy’s troops, and he has just enough smoldering bluster to make you believe Troy is a force even if they’re grossly outnumbered. When he fights Achilles, whom we learn time and again no one can defeat, Petersen realizes his best action scene, one that draws us into the fight because we care for Hector in ways that we don’t care for anyone else in the movie.

There are moments in “Troy” that do linger, such as when Hector casts huge balls of fire toward his enemy, and especially a key scene between Priam and Achilles that comes late in the film. But where are the immortal gods of Homer’s poem? Was Petersen fearful of creating another “Clash of the Titans” if he allowed them to throw thunderbolts in his movie? Worse is the dialogue, which is stiff and sometimes silly, especially when spoken by Pitt, whose self-conscious performance sends this movie down the Aegean and drowns it in hair products.

Grade: C-

On video and DVD

THE FOG OF WAR. Directed by Errol Morris, 106 minutes, rated PG-13.

When it comes to war, Robert S. McNamara – former secretary of defense for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a key player in the Cuban missile crisis and one of the most vilified men behind the Vietnam War – wants us to know that our history with war has taught us plenty. Not that we’ve learned much from it.

According to McNamara, we haven’t heeded any of war’s lessons, as our recent wars with Iraq and Afghanistan attest. “It isn’t that we aren’t rational,” he says in the movie. “We are rational. But reason has its limits. You can’t change human nature, and it’s our human nature to go to war.”

What McNamara himself has learned about war has been condensed into 11 lessons explored in detail in “The Fog of War,” Errol Morris’ stirring, Academy Award-winning documentary that digs deep into McNamara’s troubling yet fascinating life.

The film works as well as it does because it allows the 85-year-old McNamara to do most of the digging, which he does with the sort of chutzpah that would make Donald Rumsfeld pale. McNamara defends his past decisions, some of which cost millions of people their lives, but obviously he also is haunted by them, such as with his 1945 involvement in the incineration of Tokyo.

“I’m very proud of my accomplishments,” he says at the end of the movie. “And I’m very sorry that in the process of accomplishing things, I made errors.”

“We all make mistakes,” he says. “We always make mistakes. I don’t know any military commander who is honest who would say he hasn’t made a mistake. There’s a wonderful phrase, ‘the fog of war.’ What the fog of war means is that war is so complex, it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all of the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate and we kill people unnecessarily.”

How that relates to the here and now is undeniable in its potency and importance.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.

com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.