May: The Day After Tomorrow

Achilles was the first superhero. His father was a mortal, and his mother was a goddess who dipped him in the River Styx to make him invulnerable, except for that bit of his heel where she held him. He grew to become the greatest Greek warrior, and was destined to fight a battle still celebrated today, even though it never happened. Neither is there evidence that Homer, credited with composing "The Iliad" almost 400 years after Troy's collapse, really existed!

There are soldiers and ships galore as the Trojans, led by Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom, prepare to battle the Greeks, led by their greatest warrior, Achilles, played by Brad Pitt. The subject matter is a little heady for your local multiplex, but don't worry about it - from this film, you won't learn a thing anyway! Still, the sex and violence in Homer's legendary account suggest how little entertainment has changed in 3,000 years.

Visual communication may have long ago replaced the poem's oral tradition, but the appeal of star-studded dramatic conflict remains intact. It is unlikely, however, that anyone will remember "Troy the Movie" 3,000 years from now. Stripped of preamble and context, this Wolfgang Petersen film is mostly synopsis and spectacle, a highlight reel of game-winning plays without the boring details. It is good, old-fashioned, swords-and-sandals storytelling with multiple close-ups of sweaty geezers but is classic only by Hollywood's diminished definition of the word.

Golden boy Brad Pitt, as Achilles, tries hard to be as tanned, rippled and radiant as the sun god Apollo himself, and seems to embody his mythical character's inner surfer dude persona. Achilles fights for himself, not for the Greek king, played by Brian Cox, nor for the king's brother (Brendan Gleeson). But when Gleeson's wife Helen, played by Diane Kruger, flees with her handsome but slight lover, the Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom), it gives the Greek king a pretext to invade Troy. He says he wants to rescue her but he's really little more than a property speculator.

The battle "will never be forgotten, nor will the heroes who fight in it," according to a pretentious screenplay written by former high school English teacher David Benioff. But Achilles is sulky and complicated - in the same way that a snub by the king keeps Achilles on the sidelines, a grievous offence by the Trojan hero Hector, played by Eric Bana, who engages him in a "me and you outside, pal" type-conflict. Twelve days later, a wooden horse is parked at Troy's doorstep.

A couple of the performances however are first-rate. Dundee's top thesp Brian Cox, who has a striking resemblance to a Klingon, and the Irish actor Gleeson are especially fine in oversize roles that they make menacingly authentic. So too is Peter O'Toole, whose wispy but wily king of Troy watches events through haunted blue eyes.

But Bloom, an archer in "The Lord of the Rings" films and who also plays one here, is insubstantial and not authoritative enough. Kruger, too, is fairly bland as Helen, whose legendary and beautiful face apparently launched 1,000 ships - in the days before champagne bottles, obviously. Those ships, by the way, along with vast armies and endless battle sequences, are seamlessly if perfunctorily portrayed, and the sweeping digital vistas that contain them suggest scale but not scope. The entertaining result is this side of riveting.

Petersen, director of "Air Force One" and "Das Boot," is understandably infatuated with technologies that allow him to portray the impossible, but his more grandiose scenarios are admirable for their effort, not their imagination. The showstoppers are personal and tactile, like a grudge match between Bloom and Gleeson, or great balls of fire sent rolling downhill. And while the ritual-bound genre typically insists that male characters appear shirtless, Pitt often goes around sans pants as well - so there.