Troy

A lot of people will probably take offense at the liberties director Wolfgang Petersen has taken with The Iliad in this condensed version of Homer’s epic. There are no active gods, the whole Trojan war takes only two weeks or so, and Helen is cute, but not exactly painfully hot in the way necessary to launch a thousand or so ships. On the other hand, it’s not like The Iliad is true … I mean, it’s a seventh-century BCE take on a 12th-century BCE war, so if Petersen wants to do a 21st-century CE version that varies from the source material and includes a hot love scene between Brad Pitt and Rose Byrne, well, who’s to stop him? You? I don’t think so! Plus, the action is great, the fight scenes, both mass and one-on-one, are incredibly beautiful and violent, and lots of guys run around in the kind of armor that was once worn by Greeks and is now worn by geeks. It’s fun, so disburden yourself of faithfulness to texts and highbrow hatred of action, and enjoy the glowing pectorals and glistening swords of an ancient and well-photographed world.