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 s if channeling the oracle Cassandra, screenwriter Ronnie
Kern (who I suspect is a woman, but I could be wrong) must have known he/she was
in for some backlash by people who spent their bored days pouring over Homer's
epics, because the movie opens with narration that informs us what we're about
to see is "the true story" of what happened at Troy. The narrator even
makes mention of the legends that had been written about the events. Having
established the story as one based on one man's perspective, "Helen of
Troy" opens with the birth of Paris, whom a young Cassandra warns will
bring about the destruction of Troy if he's allowed to live.
As is always the case with these Greek tales (they don't
call them Greek Tragedies for nothing, you know), Paris survives infanticide and
eventually returns home to Troy, where he is sent to Sparta as an emissary.
There, Paris and the new Spartan bride Helen (Sienna Guillory) lock eyes and
realizes they're supposed to be in love because "the Gods deem it".
Long story short, Helen and Paris hightails it out of Sparta and back to Troy,
thus giving brooding and sociopathic Greek Agamemnon (Rufus Sewell), the big
brother of the wronged Spartan King Menelaus (James Callis), the excuse to
assemble the Greeks against the Trojans. Thus begins the Trojan War.
Actually, the above description is too breezy, because
Helen and Paris don't even meet until almost an hour into the movie, and the
Greek-Trojan troubles doesn't start until 30 minutes later. Which brings me to
this simple conclusion: there isn't enough here to make a 3-hour movie, and
most, if not all, of the first hour is superfluous stuff.
So the big question is, is actress Sienna Guillory ("Time
Machine") beautiful enough that she would ignite a war that lasts 10
years and bring about death and misery to all involved? Well sure, she's quite
attractive, but I can't say if there were anything particularly special about
her that would make her "the most lust after women in the world". Of
course Helen's supposed "abduction" by Paris (depending on which
version you read, Helen either went willingly or she was kidnapped by a horny
Paris) is not the real reason for the war as shown by "Helen of Troy",
which comes across more like one of those romantic Harlequin novels than an epic
adventure.
Of note is the fact that the mini-series pretty much
neglects the Gods except in passing whispers (the phrase "the Gods deem
it" shows up a lot). Although it's odd that there are a couple of curious
sequences that undermines the mini-series' attempt at a "realistic"
portrait of things. The filmmaker seems to want it both ways with their movie --
as a hopeless romance about fate and destiny and true love, and at the same time
as a gritty re-telling of events. Which one is it?
Unlike "Attila
the Hun", another historical mini-series by the USA Network, there's a
lot of money sunk into "Helen of Troy". The whole thing looks quite
good, and even the location of Troy, on a very rocky stretch of land, is
fitting. And yet, even though the movie has some elaborate battle sequences
(mostly in the second half), they're not well staged enough to convince. It just
doesn't seem as if the actors have spent much time learning how to swing a
sword. The action looks too staged, resulting in awkward fights and large
crowd scenes where background actors seem lost and confused about what they're
supposed to be doing, or even in which direction to look. The only battle that
has any ring of believability is one between Paris and Menelaus, but even this
scene is ruined by one of those curious anomalies mentioned earlier, where the
filmmakers can't decide rather to make the film realistic or fantastical.
If you were wondering, "Helen of Troy" does
indeed stray tremendously from the original works. Hector (Daniel Lapaine) has
become a nagging brother whose favorite phrase is "I told you so",
while King Priam (John Rhys-Davies) has become decision-challenged, risking
everything so the son he didn't know he had until a few months ago can shag some
hussy who ran off with him. But perhaps the worst re-imagining is Achilles, who
has been remade into an Aryan skinhead. Gone is the honorable Achilles whose
reason for dragging Paris around Troy post-mortem wasn't just because he was
some brainless oaf on a steady diet of steroids. Needless to say, Achilles'
eventual demise, involving that heel of his, is laughable.
On the other hand, Menelaus is properly ineffectual, while
Odysseus (Nigel Whitmey) is the brains of the operation, albeit not by much. Of
course the real star of the picture isn't pretty boy Matthew Marsden or Helen,
but rather the enigmatic Agamemnon. The scene that lends credence to Rufus
Sewell ("Dark City")
as the real star involves Agamemnon finding out that the only way to appease the
Gods so they'll give him favorable winds in order to sail to Troy is to kill one
of his own daughters. The man owns this movie, and no amount of naked Helen will
change that. Which, if you were wondering, she is quite a bit.
The other amusing thing about "Helen of Troy" is
how characters that have never met within the story have a bad habit of making
very grandiose (albeit correct) judgments about each other. Take for example
Helen's claim that Achilles fights for his "hollow pride", which may
in fact be true, but how did she know that? Also, everyone seems to be very
keenly aware of Agamemnon's obsessive need to conquer Troy, even though as
played by Rufus Sewell, Agamemnon is a complex and wholly unpredictable man. How
exactly did they come by such intimate knowledge of the man? Oh right, I forgot.
Because it's in the script, stupid.
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