“Troy”

Directed by: Wolfgang Peterson

Staring: Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana, Diane Kruger, 
Rose Byrne, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund and 
let’s see...did I forget anybody? Oh, yeah. Peter O’Tool.

Music by: James Horner (yay!)

I have a confession to make. When I started doing recaps of 
Orlando Bloom movies, I didn’t do it because of some sort of 
teenage hormone-fueled obsession with him. I did it because I 
loved “Pirates of the Caribbean” and I thought it would be fun 
to recap. However, I’m glad I made that decision now, as it 
gives me an excuse to recap a BRAD PITT movie with a JAMES 
HORNER score as I have adored both men since I saw “The 
Devil’s Own”. Anyway, that being said, I apologize in advance 
for the excessive drooling and gushing contained in this 
recap. 

Oh, and I bought a copy of the Iliad and read the whole thing 
so I’d be able to make a more educated comparison between the 
book and this movie. Really. No seriously, I read the book. 
Oh, fine, it was the Cliff Notes, but I really did read the 
whole thing! And I bought it used, so it was only a dollar. 
The person who had it before me (who was female judging by the 
handwriting) wrote the names of all the major actors in this 
movie next to their characters’ descriptions. She spelled 
Brendan Gleeson wrong, but at least I didn’t have to go to 
IMDB to get the cast list.

We start with some music by my favorite movie composer ever: 
James Horner. This time he is accompanied by the mournful 
wailings of Tanja Tsarovska. There are no names of actors (or 
directors or anyone really) in the opening credits, so if you 
didn’t know who was going to be in the movie before you 
started watching it you could be in for a surprise. Or, if you 
don’t recognize their faces either you could spend the entire 
movie racking your brain trying to come up with someone’s name 
and then suddenly, when there’s only about ten minutes left of 
the movie, practically blurt out “Jonathan Price!” Or maybe 
that was just me the first time I saw “Pirates of the 
Caribbean.” Anyway. 

Cut to an orangish map of Greece. The words “3200 years ago” 
are superimposed over it in tiny orangish-yellow print. To the 
person in charge of the subtitles: thanks a lot. Because this 
movie is based on a true story – or at least based on a semi-
historical retelling of a true story – we have to read 
approximately three pages worth of subtitled backstory. And 
since this is written in the same unreadable font, all I 
can tell you is blah blah decades of war blah blah King 
Agamemnon of Mycenae blah blah “loose alliance” blah blah his 
brother King Menelaus of Sparta seeks to “make peace with 
Troy” blah blah Achilles blah Greek army blah blah “threatens 
to break the fragile alliance apart.”

We open with some pretty landscape shots while Odysseus (Bean) 
voiceovers. “Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And 
so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the 
centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we’re gone 
and wonder who we were? How bravely we fought? How fiercely we 
loved?” You might want to get used to this theme of 
remembering people long after they’re dead as it will be 
repeated over and over again throughout this movie to the 
point where you will need a barrel full of aspirin to combat 
the pain caused by all the falling anvils.

Fade to black for about five minutes while JH cues up the 
Drums of Ancient Dead Guys. We fade back in on what looks like 
a really tiny desert crowded with guys in armor. This is 
Thessaly. Or so the crappy subtitles tell us. The armies 
approach each other, which takes about five more minutes, 
during which Tanja Tzarovskya wails mournfully. The leaders – 
Agamemnon (Cox) and some other old guy whose name I can’t be 
bothered to look up – meet in the center of the battlefield. 
Agamemnon says it’s a “good day for the crows”. Old Guy tells 
him to beat it. Agamemnon says make me. Pbbbbtttt. Old Guy 
says his men will never fight for Agamemnon and he can’t have 
the whole world, damnit. Agamemnon laughs like that’s the most 
ridiculous thing he’s ever heard and then says they’ll settle 
it the old fashioned way. They’ll just have their two best 
warriors pound the shit out of each other. 

Old Guy smirks and shouts “Boagrius!” A guy roughly seven 
feet tall with muscles the size of watermelons emerges from 
Old Guy’s army. He’s about three gold teeth and half a dozen 
tattoos away from being a prison inmate cliché. “Achilles,” 
Agamemnon shouts. Dead silence. Crickets chirping. Old 
Guy’s army snickers. Old Guy says yeah, most guys run for 
the hills when they see Gigantor over here. Heh. An extra 
rides up and tells Agamemnon that Achilles isn’t here. Duh. 
He says he sent “the boy” to find him. Why do they have a 
small child on the battlefield? Huh?

Cut to a camp somewhere presumably nearby. A kid who can’t be 
any older than ten enters a tent to find Brad Pitt sprawled 
out naked on top of some furs. I would just like to take this 
moment to thank the casting director. Sigh. Pause. Rewind. 
Slow motion play. Oh, there are also a couple naked women 
sprawled out behind him, but I really don’t give a shit. The 
kid reaches to wake Achilles (for that is this character’s 
name and I really don’t feel like feigning ignorance until 
somebody actually says it), who snatches his arm and bitches 
that he was having a good dream, damnit. The kid says 
Agamemnon wants to see him. Achilles grumbles that he’ll call 
him in the morning. Or whenever he gets over this hangover. 
One of the two. The kid says it *is* morning and Achilles 
blinks wearily.

Sometime later, Achilles is saddling up while the kid hands 
him his helmet, shield, sword, etc. and babbles excitedly. 
“Are the stories true? They say your mother is an immortal 
goddess. They say you can’t be killed.” “I wouldn’t be 
bothering with the shield then, would I,” Achilles asks dryly. 
Heh. The kid says the guy he’s supposed to fight is “the 
biggest man I’ve ever seen.” Achilles smirks “that’s what 
those wenches said about me last night.” Oh, okay, he doesn’t 
really say that. The kid says he wouldn’t want to fight 
Gigantor. Achilles says that’s why no one will remember his 
name. Okay, that was just cruel. And what was that thumping 
noise? Oh...an anvil just landed on the floor behind me. Huh.

So we’re back in the smallest desert ever as Achilles arrives. 
Gigantor smirks as the three functioning brain cells 
ricocheting around in his head tell him that this fight will 
be over very quickly. Agamemnon sneers that he should have 
Achilles whipped for this. Achilles says ‘okay, *you* fight 
him then,’ and makes to go back to his tent and the X-Rated 
fantasy of every male in the world. Some other old guy 
(actually his name is Nestor and I don’t have the patience to 
sit around waiting for somebody to point that out) tries to 
talk him into it with some hot air about saving all these men 
and letting them go home to their families. Achilles buys it 
and brushes past Agamemnon, muttering “imagine a king who 
fights his own battles. Wouldn’t that be a sight?” I’m not 
entirely sure how that line makes any sense here, but I love 
it! 

Achilles draws his sword and marches toward Gigantor. Gigantor 
does his big dumb giant schtick – grunting and growling and 
roaring and all but beating his chest and flinging poo at 
Achilles. Achilles starts jogging. Gigantor throws a couple 
spears, which stab into Achilles’ shield or fly right over his 
shoulder. Achilles ditches his shield and runs at Gigantor, 
leaping into the air as he sails past him and stabbing him in 
the clavicle. Wow. I don’t know how they made that look so 
realistic, but that whole sequence was pretty cool. They both 
walk a couple more feet before Gigantor takes a header into 
the sand. David...I mean Achilles stands in front of Old Guy’s 
army and cockily demands to know if anyone else wants to take 
a shot at him. A spear flies out of the crowd and slams into 
his chest and he falls over dead. No, not really, I'm just 
seeing if you're paying attention.

Old Guy approaches, staring at him in wonder, and asks what 
his name is. Achilles tells him. Old Guy says he’ll remember 
that name. Oh, really? Gee, what a surprise. Oh, look at that, 
another anvil. He hands Achilles the scepter of the ruler of 
Thessaly to “give to your king”. Achilles snits that 
Agamemnon is *not* his king and stomps off, leaving Old Guy 
to give the thing to Agamemnon himself. 

Cut to some boats paddling along beside some cliffs. I think. 
Subtitles tell us this is Sparta. We go inside some sort of 
banquet hall where girls in skimpy outfits are dancing around 
and guys are drinking and yelling. So basically it’s the 
Ancient Greeks equivalent of a strip club, I guess. Menelaus 
(Gleeson), a big man in more ways than one, stands up and 
“salutes” the princes of Troy...wow, that sounded dirty. Let 
me rephrase that. He proposes a toast. Blah blah last night in 
Sparta blah blah fought many battles blah blah respect for 
King Priam. He keeps yammering, but it doesn’t really matter 
what he’s saying because the camera has refocused on Prince 
Paris (Bloom) and Helen (Kruger), who are staring lustfully 
at each other from across the table. At least I'm choosing to 
interpret his expression as "lustful". It could just as easily 
be "creepy psycho killer" as far as I'm concerned. Seriously, 
he's freaking me out. Mommy...

Menelaus urges the boys to stand, which Hector (Bana) does, 
bumping Paris with his elbow on his way up so he doesn’t miss 
his cue as he still hasn’t taken his eyes off Helen. “To 
peace,” Hector declares. “May the gods keep the wolves in the 
hills and the women in our beds,” Menelas adds. Grumble. I’m 
not even going to dignify that with a response. Paris and 
Helen are apparently physically incapable of tearing their 
eyes away from each other. How has Menelaus not caught them 
yet? I mean, the only way they could be more obvious is if 
they started doing it right there on the table. Everybody 
starts mingling. Menelaus molests a couple dancing girls, hugs 
Hector and pours wine on the floor. Meanwhile, Helen sneaks 
off upstairs. Paris immediately blows off the girl he was 
talking to and follows her. Yeah, he really sucks at being 
discrete. He might as well announce to the whole room that 
he’ll be upstairs shagging the queen if anybody needs him. 
Hector sees them leave and looks pissed. Or something.

Helen has her back to the door, brushing her hair, when Paris 
enters, staring at her with the same expression he had 
downstairs at the party as he very deliberately locks the 
door. I feel like I accidentally sat on the remote and changed 
the channel to either a really bizarre porn flick or a murder 
mystery thriller set in ancient Greece. If that's the case 
Helen should either start flashing skin and talking in a 
cheesy/husky voice or scream her head off and try to bludgeon 
him with her hairbrush.

She says he shouldn't be here. He kind of smirks and says 
"that's what you said last night." Okay, so we're leaning 
towards the porn flick, I guess. She says last night was a 
"mistake," a phrase women have apparently been using since the 
dawn of time. "And the night before," he asks. Geez, how long 
have they been going at it? And *nobody* has figured it out 
yet? "I've made many mistakes this week," she mutters. Ouch. 
And hee. He stands behind her and brushes her hair off her 
shoulders. The gesture looks kind of awkward to me, but I'm 
not sure why. He asks if she wants him to go then. She stands 
up, turns around and yanks her dress off. I take it that's a 
no? They kiss violently and we go back to the party where 
Hector is pacing back and forth, anxiously watching the 
staircase. I get the impression he’s done this before. Oh, and 
Menelaus has one of the dancers in his lap and is currently 
shoving his tongue down her throat. Yeah, he’s a real catch.

Paris pulls a pearl necklace out of somewhere – I’m afraid to 
ask where – to give to Helen. We get a brief shot of him 
standing naked beside the bed where Diane Kruger’s butt 
double (I’m assuming) is sprawled face down. He’s covered from 
the waist down by her and the bed, which prompted several 
women to send at least a half a dozen e-mails to the yahoo 
mailing groups I belong to consisting entirely of the words 
“DAMN BED!!!” Note to make up artist: I don’t think the make 
up covering Orlando’s tattoo was as subtle as you’d hoped it 
would look. I’m sorry, is Orlando half naked and all I can 
focus on is his tattoo? Oh, okay, I’ll give it a shot. Ahem. 
SQUEEEEEEAL! OH MY GOD HE’S SO – I’m sorry, I can’t do this.

Helen sits up and Paris puts the necklace on her. She yammers 
about something, but all I can focus on is the fact that in 
the last shot her hair looked shorter, straighter and darker, 
which further supports my theory that it was a double. And not 
even a good one if she doesn’t even have the same hair color. 
I mean, do they think we just fell off the turnip truck or 
we’re they assuming we’d all be so distracted by Orlando’s 
bare chest that we wouldn’t notice? What were they talking 
about again? Oh, yeah, something about Menelaus killing both 
of them. Paris tells her not to be afraid of him. She says 
she’s not, she’s afraid of tomorrow when she’ll have to watch 
Paris sail out of her life forever. Wow that sounds cheesy. 

She says before he came to Sparta she was "a ghost." Blahdy 
blah blah poetic gobblegook. He tells her she doesn't have to 
be afraid and she can come with him tomorrow. She looks 
surprised and maybe a bit hopeful for a second and then tells 
him to quit playing with her. He's insistent. He says if she 
does, they won't be safe, but...why are his eyes wandering 
like that? Over here, Sparky. There we go. Where was I? Oh, 
yeah, men will hunt them, gods will curse them yadda yadda 
"but I'll love you." I swear Orlando’s expression here is 
exactly the same as the one he had when Will declared his love 
for Liz in "Pirates of the Caribbean". It's adorable in a 
puppy-dog sort of way... "Till the day they burn my body, I 
will love you," Paris declares. Thousands of women all over 
the world turn to their husbands/boyfriends/lovers and ask 
"how come you never talk to *me* like that?" My mother, the 
Cynical One, mutters "yeah, or until you get bored with her."

Cut to a ship sailing the next day. Presumably. Hector is 
standing on the deck, whittling away at a piece of wood when 
Paris approaches. They make awkward chit chat for a while and 
Paris’ robe blows open because we apparently didn’t see enough 
of his bare chest in the last scene. Paris looks at the knife 
Hector is holding and hesitantly asks, “do you love me, 
brother?” Okay, no good can ever come from a conversation that 
starts like that. Hector seems to agree as he says “the last 
time you spoke to me like this you were ten years old and 
you’d just stolen father’s horse. What have you done now?” Um, 
you might want to put that knife away first. Paris says he has 
to show Hector something and leads him to the cargo hold, 
where Helen emerges from the shadows wearing a hooded cape.

Back in Sparta, a door slams open and Menelaus stomps into 
Helen’s room. He threatens the servant girl he finds there 
with a knife in the hopes that she will give up his wayward 
wife’s location. An extra enters and tells him that Helen 
left. “With the Trojans.” “What,” Menelaus sputters. “She took 
the condoms?!” I’m sorry, I had to do it! The extra has a 
witness who says she left with the youngest prince of Troy. 
Which is Paris, by the way. For those of you just joining us. 
“Get my ship ready,” Menelaus growls.

Back on the ship, Hector marches up on deck and orders the men 
to turn them around and go back to Sparta. Paris scampers 
after him, spluttering 'wait...but...please! Listen I...' 
Hector asks if he's completely lost his mind and reminds him 
of how hard their father worked for peace between Troy and 
Sparta. Paris says 'but I love her!' Hector accuses him of 
acting like this is a game. Sleeping with other men's wives 
and calling it love. Excuse me, but has he actually done this 
before? I mean I know I said it looked like that before, but 
if he hasn't then that seems like a really unfair and sweeping 
generalization. He screams at Paris for several minutes, 
successfully yanking Paris' head out of his ass and knocking 
him from his high horse. I just love mixing metaphors - it's 
fun! Paris completely avoids his eyes, looking very much like 
a small child being yelled at by Daddy.

Hector finally stops his tirade and marches off, muttering to 
himself. Paris asks if he can talk now. He says okay, he 
fucked up, but if they send Helen back he's going with her. 
"They'll kill you," Hector sneers. Paris says okay, let them 
try. "I'll die fighting." Sure you will. Hector rolls his eyes 
and asks if he really thinks that would be "heroic." Well, 
according to my theory that "heroic" is synonymous with 
"stupid" and "suicidal" I'd say...yeah. "Have you ever killed 
a man," Hector demands. No. "Ever seen a man die in combat?" 
Ye...oh, wait...um...no. Well, Hector has, and he says there's 
nothing "glorious" or "poetic" about it. Right on, brother. My 
grandfather thanks you from wherever he is in the afterlife. 
Hector says Paris don't know shit about love 'n' war, so he 
can just shut his pretty little yap. Paris says he's going 
with her anyway. Did he even hear anything Hector just said or 
was he too busy picturing Helen naked and covered in honey? "I 
won't ask you to fight my war," he mumbles. "You already 
have," Hector grouses. Then he turns and orders the men to 
turn around - again - and head for Troy. One guy whirls around 
in a huff and screams "for the love of Zeus, man, would you 
make up your fucking MIND?! YOU try steering this bloody thing 
if you think it's so damn EASY!" But unfortunately the camera 
cuts away before we actually see this.
 
Mycenae. According to the captions. A guy with a ridiculous 
looking helmet leads a group of men up a hill and into a 
building. Oh, it’s Menelaus. He takes off his helmet 
(thankfully because I don’t think I could have kept a straight 
face if I had to recap an entire scene with him wearing that 
thing) and throws it at an extra, then slams open a door and 
marches up to Agamemnon’s throne. “I want her back,” he 
whines. “Of course you do,” Agamemnon coos as if he were 
talking to a six-year-old. Which really isn’t all that 
inaccurate. Menelaus says he wants her back so he can kill 
her. What makes him so sure this was her idea anyway? Why is 
it always the woman’s fault, no matter what side of the affair 
she’s on? Seriously, I’m curious. Oh, and he says he wants all 
of Troy burned to the ground. Agamemnon reminds him that he 
wanted to make peace with the Trojans a couple days ago. 
Menelaus says he should have listened to his brother. “Peace 
is for the women,” Agamemnon nods. “And the weak.” My remote 
crashes into the television screen followed by a long stream 
of curses that I will not bother transcribing. Menelaus then 
says the line that has been in every preview and commercial 
for this movie: “will you go to war with me brother?” They 
clasp hands and hug. 

War room. Kinda. Some time later. Agamemnon yammers about how 
"useful" Helen has become and laughs evilly. Nestor reminds 
him that the Trojans have never been conquered and some think 
it's because such a thing is impossible. Not really, all you 
need is a *lot* of wood and...I'm getting ahead of myself, 
aren't I? Oh, well. He blithers something about Priam hiding 
behind the walls of Troy hoping the sun god will protect him. 
Then he slams some sort of brush or something on the table and 
declares that the gods protect the strong. He could have 
slapped his dick on the table and declared himself King Tut 
and it wouldn't have made much of a difference, really. Except 
I would have laughed my ass off and then considered using my 
pen to poke my eyes out. He says without Troy, he'll control 
the entire Aegean. Nestor argues that Hector has the best army 
in the east. Agamemnon says he can do better. Also? His dick 
is bigger. 

Nestor says that they'll need Achilles. Agamemnon argues that 
he "can't be controlled" and would just as soon fight them as 
the Trojans. Gee, I can't imagine why. Nestor says they don't 
need to "control" him, just "unleash" him. Okay, is anybody 
else picturing Achilles chained to a pole by a spiky dog 
collar, snarling and foaming at the mouth? Just me? Okay then, 
never mind. Forget I said that. Nestor says he was “born to 
end lives”. Agamemnon says yeah, but he’s a threat to 
“everything I have built.” Or, you know, stolen. Agamemnon 
rants that Greece was nothing before he came along. He brought 
everyone together and made them civilized! And the sun rises 
and sets on his giant ego! Nestor points out that Achilles has 
personally won several battles for them. “This will be the 
greatest war the world has ever seen. We need the greatest 
warrior.” Agamemnon sighs and reluctantly agrees, but says 
“there’s only one man he’ll listen to.”

Phtia. Home of an early approximation of Stonehenge and one 
really hot guy. Achilles is sparing with a younger, skinnier 
blond-haired guy. I feel obligated to point out that this guy 
is played by Garrett Hedlund, a fellow Minnesota native – a 
fact which was pointed out to me by one of my mother’s 
students. He’s also younger than me, which I find disturbing 
as he *looks* at least twenty-five. Achilles stops and 
scratches his back with his wooden “sword” so he can prove how 
great of a fighter he is when Garrett comes at him and he 
effortlessly blocks him and gives him a lecture about never 
hesitating. They banter and fight some more but I’m not going 
to bother transcribing it. I’ll just sit back and focus on the 
prettiness that is Brad Pitt. Achilles stops suddenly and 
looks into the distance, practically sniffing the air like a 
guard dog. He picks up a spear and hurls it into a tree 
approximately two feet from Odysseus’ head. Odysseus, by the 
way, is wearing a helmet very similar to the one Menelaus was 
wearing earlier, so we can assume the doomsday brothers sent 
him and he’s the “one man” Agamemnon was referring to. 

He removes the spear and throws it back to Achilles, making a 
snarky comment about Achilles’ “hospitality”. Achilles 
introduces him to his “cousin” Patroclus. What? [Diandra 
frantically thumbs through her Cliff Notes] Since when?
No, seriously, what was the point of casting Patroclus as 
Achilles’ cousin? Are we afraid we’ll ruin Brad Pitt’s leading 
man image if we don’t totally eliminate anything that could 
suggest that his character was anything other than straight? 
Whatever. Slashers and Iliad buffs shriek in outrage. Then he 
announces Odysseus’ name and calls him the “King of Ithica” 
for no particular reason other than to inform the audience. 

They spend the next couple minutes spewing exposition about 
Patroclus’ parents dying and Achilles raising him and teaching 
him how to fight. Achilles finally gets bored and asks 
Odysseus if Agamemnon sent him. He says he won’t fight for 
that jackhole. Odysseus says he’s not asking him to fight for 
Agamemnon, he’s asking him to fight for the Greeks. “Why? Are 
the Greeks tired of fighting each other,” Achilles asks. Heh. 
I love it. He says the Trojan’s never did anything to him, why 
would he want to fight them? Odysseus says they “insulted 
Greece”. Achilles says whatever, they insulted one Greek who 
couldn’t keep his wife happy. La-di-dah. It’s none of his 
business. Odysseus argues that his business is war and I 
completely lose track of the rest of this conversation. 

Patroclus, bored to death by all the plot set up and 
exposition drivel, starts swinging his wooden dowel at 
Achilles again. Odysseus continues to blather while the 
sparing match continues. I think this was just done to show 
that Achilles can still kick Patroclus’ ass even with the 
majority of his attention focused on Odysseus. Blah blah his 
wife will feel better blah blah he’ll feel safer blah blah 
largest fleet ever. Patroclus – who has already lost the 
match, naturally - asks if Hector is as good a warrior as 
people say he is. Odysseus says yep, best in Troy. “Some say 
he’s better than all the Greeks too,” he says loudly, looking 
pointedly at Achilles. Achilles rolls his eyes like he knows 
what Odysseus is trying to do and it’s not going to work. And 
he’s perfectly happy with the size of his spear. I’m going to 
pretend I didn’t just type that. Then Odysseus tries to get 
Patroclus to join the battle and Achilles snips at him to 
leave his “cousin” out of it. Odysseus says they’ll be leaving 
for Troy in three days and goes to leave. Then he stops and 
turns slowly while the camera zooms in on his face and, in a 
totally soap-opera moment, he says “this war will never be 
forgotten. Nor will the heroes who fight in it.” Ow! Anvil!

So Achilles does what any big, manly tough guy would do in 
this situation: he goes to talk to his mommy. Julie Christie 
will apparently be playing the part of Eve, waving the apple 
of ill-conceived ideas at the easily-manipulated Adam. She 
says she knew "they" would come for Achilles and she knew it 
even before he was born. "They want you to fight in Troy." He 
tells her he has to make his decision tonight. She says if he 
stays he will marry, have kids, etc. and obviously this is not 
an appealing alternative to him. "They will love you," she 
says. Maybe. "And when you are gone they will remember you." 
But when they all die "your name will be lost." On the other 
hand, if he goes to Troy to fight the war, "glory will be 
yours. They will write stories about your victories for 
thousands of years. The world will remember your name." He 
stares off into the distance, picturing people groveling at 
his feet and offering to wipe his ass for all of eternity or 
something. But, she says, there's a catch: he can never come 
home. "For your glory walks hand in hand with your doom." 
Thank you, Madame Zora, what else does your crystal ball say? 

Achilles looks pensive while the wind blows his hair and JH 
cues up the Dramatic Brass of Angsty Heroes. This fades to a 
shot of him standing on a boat with pretty much the same 
expression. We pan up to see hundreds of ships - as far as the 
eye can see – all sailing for Troy. The music continues to 
crescendo, carrying us all the way to...

...Troy, where Hector and the Couple of Doom are arriving. The 
entire population of the city is lining the streets, cheering 
and throwing flower petals. People didn’t have much in the way 
of entertainment back then. The town gossips point at Helen 
and whisper to each other. Helen smiles nervously and wonders 
what the hell made her think this was a good plan. The trio 
arrive at the palace where they are met by the boys’ father 
(O’Tool). Priam hugs and kisses the boys. Paris introduces him 
to Helen. “Helen of Sparta,” Priam asks obliviously. “Helen of 
Troy,” Paris corrects. Priam shoots him a look that says “oh 
god, what did you do? And where the hell is my wife? And my 
other forty-eight sons?” Then he shrugs it off and welcomes 
her with a kiss.

Inside, Hector is greeted by his wife, who reintroduces him to 
their infant son. Were they gone for a long time or is this 
just something she does on a regular basis? Maybe she hit her 
head sometime after giving birth and can’t make any new 
memories, like that guy in “Memento”. Whatever. A pretty woman 
enters the room, dressed in a long white dress and ridiculous 
looking tiara. She runs to greet Paris and can I just say how 
much I love Orlando Bloom’s smile? It always looks so genuine 
and it makes his whole face light up like a friggin’ Christmas 
tree. It’s infectious. Anyway, they hug and then he opens his 
mouth and some more exposition comes spewing out about this 
girl being his cousin Briseis. Hector comes over, takes a look 
at her ridiculous outfit and announces that she’s a “servant 
of Apollo” now. If I didn’t already know that Apollo was a 
Greek god, I’d probably be saying something dirty right now.

Overhead shot of Troy, which is freakin’ huge on many levels. 
The people in pre-production would like to remind the academy 
voters that it took a long freaking time to build all of this 
only to have to rebuild an entire wall after a hurricane 
knocked it down and...what? It’s too late? Oh, okay then. 
Moving on. Trumpets blare crazily. Ah, James. Have I mentioned 
how much I love you? Pan into a temple of some sort where 
Priam and Hector are discussing Paris’ stupidity. Priam says 
it’s the “will of the gods” and it’s all in their hands now 
but he can’t believe Hector actually let him kidnap a married 
woman. Hector says it was either that or bringing him home in 
a wooden box. A very small wooden box. Priam says something I 
can’t decipher and Hector says something about Menelaus 
spearing their heads to the gate. Whatever. I don’t care. 
Where’s Brad? 

Priam asks what Hector expects him to do. Hector says “put her 
on a ship and send her home.” Haven’t we been over this 
already? “Women have always loved Paris. And some men too,” 
Priam muses. Okay, so I made the last part up. “And he has 
loved them back, but this is different.” He says if they send 
her back, Paris will follow her, which is exactly what Paris 
said, like, thirty minutes ago and I really don’t see how this 
conversation was even necessary as it only reiterates crap 
that’s already been debated over. And really at this point 
they should realize that it’s far too late to just send her 
home and apologize. You don’t just sleep with a married woman, 
smuggle her out of her husband’s palace and then send her back 
home a few days later with a fruit basket and a note that says 
“sorry I screwed your wife, hope we can still be friends”. 

Hector says he doesn’t want to see his people put in harm’s 
way just because his brother – as my mother so aptly put it – 
“couldn’t keep it in his toga.” He adds that Menelaus has 
probably enlisted his brother by now, in which case they’re 
screwed. “Enemies have been attacking us for centuries, our 
wall still stands,” Priam argues naively. He says the sun god 
watches over them. Hector rolls his eyes and asks how many men 
there are in Apollo’s army. Dude, I’m all about questioning 
religious zealots but I seriously doubt that anyone in that 
time period would say such a thing. They’d be too busy making 
sacrifices and cowering in fear from thunderstorms. I mean, 
we’re talking about twelfth century BC here. These people 
thought the earth was flat and the sun was carried across the 
sky by a guy in a chariot. Priam snaps at him and I move on to 
the next scene.

Some other room...somewhere. Helen is standing by a hole in 
the wall that passes for a window and declares “they’re coming 
for me.” Because apparently all women in ancient Greece were 
clairvoyant. Paris walks into frame behind her and oh, god, 
he’s half naked again. This has officially entered the realm 
of shameless gratuity. He blathers some half-cocked scheme 
involving them taking a couple horses and running for the 
hills. He’s acting really weird during this scene. He looks 
like he’s just barely restraining himself from bouncing up and 
down like a four-year-old. Note to director: do not give 
Orlando sugar before filming. Helen argues that he’d be 
leaving his home. He says she left hers for him. She launches 
into a story about her parents sending her to Sparta when she 
was 16 to marry Menelaus and she didn’t love him and blah blah 
blah. Paris, who apparently wasn’t listening to her at all, 
keeps going on about his plan as if she never interrupted him. 
Hello? She’s spilling her guts over here! Could you try using 
the brain *north* of the equator for a while? Sheesh. 

She says Menelaus won’t give up and he’ll follow them to the 
end of the world if necessary just so he can chop them into 
tiny pieces and feed them to his dogs. Paris thinks they can 
lose him. Because his undying love for Helen has killed 
whatever brain cells he may have had I guess. She grabs him by 
the ears to get his attention - well, not *literally* - and 
says “you don’t know Menelaus [and Agamemnon]. They will burn 
every house in Troy to find us” and even if they thought the 
couple had high tailed it out of there they’d “burn it for 
spite.” Paris says he’ll make it easy for Menelaus to find him 
then. “I’ll walk right up to him and tell him you’re mine.” I 
fall out of my chair laughing my ass off. Yeah. You do that. 
Let me know how it turns out. Snort. She sort of smiles and 
kisses him. I imagine she’s thinking “you’re lucky there are 
49 other guys in line for the throne ahead of you because 
you’re too stupid to ever be allowed to run a country, but 
you’re cute and sweet, so I can’t hold it against you.” Wait. 
Are Hector and Paris the only *crown* princes? Is that it? So, 
if anything happens to Hector, Paris takes the throne by 
default? Why am I worrying about this? My head hurts. “You are 
very young, my love,” she says. The “and stupid” part is 
implied.

There’s another gorgeous pan of the city against the sunrise 
(or sunset, I can’t tell) while Tania Tzarinova wails some 
more. Priam kneels in front of a statue of one of the gods 
(maybe Apollo) and manages to blow me away without even saying 
a word.

Next day. The Trojans are setting up their line of defense on 
the beach. You know, spears in the sand and whatnot. More 
wailing from Tatijana Tzarina. Hector plays with his son while 
his wife watches proudly. The kid is playing with a wooden 
lion, by the way. Presumably the thing he was carving earlier 
when Paris interrupted him to tell him about his latest bout 
of stupidity. That could be important. Maybe. Hint hint. Oh 
and Hector is also bare chested in this scene because the men 
of Troy apparently didn’t believe in shirts. The sentries 
start ringing the alarm bell and he goes to see what’s wrong. 
Ships totally obscure the horizon. This is the cue for the 
baby to wail just so we have a sense of the tension and drama 
of the moment. 

Back in the doomed couple’s room, Paris goes to see what the 
fuss is about. He walks so close to the camera he nearly 
smacks right into it. Yes, let’s make sure we get reeeeaaaal 
close up on his bare chest and make all the teenage girls 
squeal in lust. Sigh. Helen looks nervous and angsty. 

Chaos. People running in every direction in the streets of 
Troy. We pan back over the ships and see that one of them is 
several hundred knots or so ahead of the others. Yep, it’s 
Achilles. The guy commanding the boat asks if maybe Achilles 
thinks they should wait for the others. Achilles says not a 
chance and Agamemnon can suck it. Speaking of the devil, 
Agamemnon and Nestor watch from their own boat. Nestor can 
tell exactly whose boat it is because Achilles’ is the only 
one with black sails. Agamemnon wonders aloud if Achilles is 
completely daft. “He’s going to take the beach of Troy with 
fifty men?!”

In Troy, the men are scrambling around and Hector is barking 
orders at them. JH starts up the Drums of Impending Warfare.

Achilles tells Patroclus to put down the battle gear because 
he is definitely *not* going to be doing any fighting. “But 
I’m ready,” Patroclus whines. They argue for a while and 
Achilles finally convinces Patroclus to stay and guard the 
ship. Reluctantly. 

Hector gets up in front of the Trojan army and gives a speech. 
Blah blah honor the gods blah blah defend your country blah 
blah. Cut to Achilles giving a similar pep talk to his men. 
Except his is about menace and lions and he’d rather fight 
with them than anyone else. “You know what’s there, waiting 
beyond that beach,” he asks. “Immortality! Take it! It’s 
yours!” The music crescendos while his hair blows around him 
in slow motion. I believe the song is called “March of the 
Falling Anvils.” Ow.

The ship touches shore and Achilles jumps out. The Trojans 
shoot a couple dozen flaming arrows and kill several guys 
before they even get out of the boat. Well, this is a good 
start. An arrow hits Achilles’ shield, which he spins 
dramatically before running further up the beach. Chaos. Some 
guy gets hit in the face with an arrow. Eeeeewwwwwww. Achilles 
kneels and orders the remaining men to gather around him. They 
form a sort of half Roman Turtle with their shields and march 
on up the beach. As they’re doing this, we get some cool POV 
shots through gaps in the shields. One guy pokes his head out 
from the back and shoots an arrow back at the Trojans. It hits 
one of them and all other sound stops so we can hear him 
scream that same blasted scream that’s been in use since radio 
was the only form of entertainment media and fall over. The 
Turtle breaks and the hand to hand combat starts. Achilles 
throws a spear right into one guy’s face and I get nauseous. 
Clang clang grunt groan scream clang. JH eases up on the war 
drums in favor of the Heroic Brass.

Some big dumb brute in one of the other ships gets pissed that 
that little pipsqueak Achilles is stealing his thunder and 
throws one of the rowers aside, taking over his post and 
barking at everybody else to row faster. Quick, somebody get a 
ruler! They hit the beach, where Hector and the Trojan cavalry 
meet them and shoot some more flaming arrows. The big dumb 
brute casually rips an arrow out of his thigh and single-
handedly kills about a dozen Trojans.

Meanwhile, Achilles is showing off by fighting multiple guys 
at once and catching arrows with his shield behind his BACK, 
all without breaking a sweat. He straps the shield to his back 
so he has both hands free, but there doesn’t seem to be much 
point in it since he’s only fighting with one hand. Everything 
goes into slow motion as he does his signature leaping kill 
shot that looks wicked awesome. He runs up the steps of a 
temple that is outside the walls of Troy for some reason 
and...wow...would you get a load of those thighs? Grrr. Sorry. 
He kills about a dozen more guys, the last of which gets a 
dagger imbedded sideways about three inches into his face. I 
throw my arms over my head and whimper for several minutes.

The music dies down as a Trojan who is not Hector orders the 
men to back off. Achilles takes this as his cue to take off 
his helmet and give his men the O.K. to start raiding the 
temple. They cheer and race inside. A guy I will henceforth 
refer to as “Creepy Eyes” approaches Achilles and suggests 
that it may not be a good idea to offend Apollo because he 
*is* an all seeing god and...Achilles interrupts him by 
chopping the head off the statue of Apollo in front of the 
temple. Creepy Eyes’ jaw drops and his eyes get even bigger, 
if that’s possible. Gee, I’m not sure that’s a dramatic enough 
statement there, Achilles. Maybe you should pee on the 
disembodied head while you’re at it. I mean, if you’re going 
to piss off the gods you might as well go all out. 

Hector and his cavalry come up over the hill. Achilles takes 
Creepy Eyes’ spear and throws it in their direction, knocking 
the guy next to Hector off his horse from a distance of, like, 
two miles. Show off. Hector stops, looks at the guy, looks at 
Achilles, looks at the guy, manages to pull his jaw back up 
off the ground and gulps. Then he keeps riding, throwing his 
own spear at Achilles and missing him by about a foot. Yeah, 
yeah, we get it. Achilles is a better warrior. At least in 
this movie. I had a child psychology professor who insisted 
the opposite was true in reality though, so I’m going to go 
for the middle ground and assume that they were an equal 
match. Achilles smirks and saunters calmly into the temple. 
Hector and his men follow hesitantly and stand at the 
entrance, watching warily as Achilles turns a corner at the 
end of the hall and disappears. There is complete silence 
except for the slight humming sound created by the ants 
crawling on the walls screaming “IT’S A TRAP YOU MORONS! RUN!” 
They enter anyway and are immediately ambushed by the 
Myrmidons. All but, like, three guys are killed. And Hector, 
of course. In fact, they don’t even go *near* Hector, they 
just let him walk into the next room of the temple after 
Achilles. Way to protect your captain, guys. 

Achilles’ voice booms out from the shadows as Hector enters 
the room. “You are very brave but very stupid to come after me 
alone...you must be Hector.” Heh. He comes out into the light 
and Hector sneers at him, pointing to the corpses of a couple 
of priests and hissing that they were unarmed non-soldiers. 
Then he lunges at Achilles, who darts up onto the platform of 
a statue, using it for cover. Hector demands he stop acting 
like a coward and fight. Achilles smirks and cockily saunters 
away, calling back “why kill you now with no one here to see 
you fall?” Hector warily follows Achilles outside, dragging a 
cloud of confusion behind him. He demands to know why Achilles 
came here. “They’ll be talking about this war for a thousand 
years.” Thunk. Oh, and for some reason he says the word 
“talking” in a way that seems to be approximating a British 
lilt, but I’m not sure why. Hector looks totally baffled and 
points out that they’ll be long dead by then. Well, I would 
hope so. I mean, unless the Trojan’s discovered the fountain 
of eternal life or something. Achilles points out that their 
names will still be around though. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. No, 
really, we get it. 

Achilles’ men finally realize the Trojan leader has 
disappeared along with their own leader and run over to 
surround Hector, waving their swords threateningly. Achilles 
sighs and tells Hector to go home and bang his wife and 
they’ll have their little “war” tomorrow. Hector snarls 
something about Achilles acting like war is a game but the men 
he’s killed have wives who’ll never see them again. “Perhaps 
your brother can comfort them,” Achilles deadpans. “I hear 
he’s good at charming other men’s wives.” Oooo, hiss! Giggle! 
Hector leaves rather dejectedly, steam still coming out of his 
ears. Creepy Eyes asks what the hell that was about. Achilles 
says it’s “too early in the day for killing princes” which, 
frankly, is the stupidest excuse ever for not taking out an 
enemy.

Achilles then climbs to some sort of lookout point to see the 
rest of the ships arriving and a crowd of men lining the 
beaches. He raises his sword dramatically as they cheer. Drums 
and cymbals crash and the brass section blares away again. 
Then he goes down to the beach to greet Gigantor II – who we 
now find out is Ajax – and they basically suck up to each 
other a bit and then he jokes around with Odysseus and then 
Creepy Eyes says he has to show him something.

Achilles’ tent. I guess this must be quite some time after the 
last scene if the guys on the beach have had time to set up 
camp and pitch tents. Briseis, partly dressed and pretty 
roughed up and bruised, is tied to a tent pole or something. 
Creepy eyes says they thought she’d um...long pause...”amuse” 
Achilles. Gee, I don’t think you’ve spelled it out clearly 
enough there. Maybe you should draw him a picture. He leaves 
and Achilles and Briseis start having some sort of discussion 
but to be honest, I'm not sure what either of them is saying 
because Achilles is stripping all his clothes off as they talk 
and I'm too busy trying to roll my tongue back up into my 
mouth to pay attention. I sorta blanked out after that, but 
according to Chrissy (who I forgot was coming over to help me 
with the recap), she says she walked in the door to find me 
sitting in front of the screen, tape paused on a shot of 
Brad's naked torso, eyes glazed over and mouth wide open. She 
says she tried to get my attention for, like, five minutes, 
but I'm sure she's exaggerating. Maybe. Also, she says I'm 
pathetic.

I guess the conversation had something to do with the gods 
because Briseis spits that he’s a killer who “wouldn’t know 
anything about the gods.” Achilles responds to this by 
throwing a handful of water at her. Yeah, that’s mature. He 
says he knows more than her priests and comes closer to the 
camera so we can get a better look at his naked...glistening 
...incredibly muscled...I’m sorry, is he still talking?
   Chrissy: Here, give me that...
This is Chris. Achilles sniffs Briseis’ hair and announces 
that she must be royalty. He asks her for her name and she 
doesn’t respond. He unties her (why?) and mutters something 
about how even servants of Apollo have names. She meekly tells 
him and he asks if she’s afraid. She asks if she should be. Is 
this scene actually going anywhere or is it just being dragged 
out so all the females in the audience will have ample time to 
get all worked up over the sight of Brad Pitt’s bare chest and 
bulging muscles? Because if Diandra is any indication, I’d say 
it’s working.
   Diandra: (eyes glazed over, panting) Wha? (wipes drool from 
   chin)

They’re interrupted when Eudorus (or as Dee has apparently 
been referring to him: Creepy Eyes) sticks his head in the 
tent and announces that Agamemnon wants to see him because the 
kings are celebrating their great “victory”. And why would 
they want Achilles to be there? Just to rub it in that they’re 
taking all the credit for his work? I don’t get it. Anyway, 
Achilles dismisses him and Briseis asks what he wants to get 
out of this war if it’s not Helen. “I want what all men want,” 
he says. Sex and a big screen TV? Silence. “You don’t need to 
fear me,” he sneers. “You’re the only Trojan who can say 
that.” Well, actually, Paris ca...oops. Getting ahead of 
myself. Never mind. Forget I said that.
   Chrissy: You good to take over the recap again?
   Diandra: (runs out of the room and returns with a giant bar 
    of chocolate) Yeah, okay. Hand it over.

So, Achilles goes to Agamemnon’s tent, which has been built 
over the ship he sailed in on. He finds some old guy yammering 
about Agamemnon winning a “great victory” and no one thought 
it could be done so easily and blah blah blah. Agamemnon, in 
true ego-inflated leader fashion, takes all the credit despite 
the fact that he basically sat on his ass during the whole 
fight and watched everybody else do the dirty work. He 
promises one guy that Troy will be his...er...”theirs” in one 
day. Or a week. Or nine years. You know, whatever. Actually, 
one of the major complaints Iliad buffs have about this movie 
is that the war doesn’t take nearly as long as it should have. 
But the movie covers everything in the book and then some 
because The Iliad only covers, like, two weeks of the war and 
it’s not even the *last* two weeks. Basically, I compared the 
timelines and from what I can figure, the second Achilles and 
his men touched shore they went through some sort of worm hole 
and nine years went by before they had even made it all the 
way up the beach. Whatever. 

Agamemnon sees Achilles and dismisses the others with a scowl. 
As Odysseus is leaving he pats Achilles on the arm and says 
“war is young men dying and old men talking. You know this. 
Ignore the politics.” Heh. A long pause filled with much 
staring follows. “Apparently you won some great victory,” 
Achilles snits. “Ah, perhaps you didn’t notice,” Agamemnon 
condescends. Blah blah I own this beach blah whatever I’m not 
here to stake claims blah no you’re here because “you want 
your name to last through the ages.” No, really? Whatever gave 
you that idea? THUNK.

Agamemnon says there *was* a great victory today, but it was 
"not yours." "Kings did not kneel to Achilles." "Perhaps the 
kings were too far behind to see," Achilles says dryly. Hee. 
"History remembers Kings," Agamemnon roars. "Not soldiers!" 
Oh, shut up you useless twat. Blah blah he says they'll 
"batter down the gates of Troy" and he'll "build monuments to 
victory on every island of Greece" and carve his name in 
stone. How about just making a giant statue of a penis, would 
that do? God. Choking. I'm choking on the testosterone over 
here! Achilles tells him not to count his chickens before 
before the milk...um...okay, I suck at metaphors in case y'all 
haven't noticed already. He says he has to actually *win* 
first, okay? 

Agamemnon says you robbed the Temple of Apollo, right? 
Achilles says yeah, sure, you want gold or something? Cause 
you can go for it. Agamemnon says nah, he already took what he 
wanted and his cronies drag a scratched up and beaten Briesis 
into the tent. Achilles gets his dander up (no, not THAT) and 
says, basically, 'release her or die.' What? He became 
attached after spending all of five minutes with her? What the 
hell? Agamemnon calls his guards and everybody draws their 
swords. They freeze when Briesis shrieks "stop!" She says 
she's had it with the killing and nobody's going to die for 
her. That's lucky for Achilles because he was very much 
outnumbered there. He lowers his sword and starts pacing like 
a caged tiger. Agamemnon taunts him some more and basically 
implies that he will be nailing Briseis to the mattress 
tonight. Ew. If I poured bleach on my head, do you think I 
could cleanse myself of that mental image? Achilles calls him 
a “sack of wine” and vows that “before my time is done, I will 
look down on your corpse and smile.” Agamemnon just stares at 
him, looking like he might just pee himself.

Temple. Or wherever it is that Priam is holding a meeting with 
his advisors. Some guy declares that they will give the Greeks 
the war they want. Blah blah blah. Priam asks in a booming 
voice if the guy thinks they can win. No. Oh, wait, yes he 
does. Because the walls of Troy have never been breached and 
they have the best archers and Hector and stop me if you’ve 
heard this one before. Another guy, who is apparently the 
official soothsayer of Troy, declares that some farmer told 
him he saw an eagle fly by clutching a snake, which is a sign 
from Apollo that they will win a great victory tomorrow. Wha? 
Hector speaks for me when he snits about them basing their 
strategy on superstitious “signs” from the gods. Bicker bicker 
snip snap. Paris jumps up and declares that there won’t be a 
war because this has nothing to do with anybody but him and 
Menelaus and he doesn’t want any more people to die because of 
his stupidity. “Paris,” Priam barks warningly. Heh. Paris 
ignores the warning and declares that he will challenge 
Menelaus to a duel tomorrow. The winner gets Helen and "the 
loser will burn before nightfall." He looks around awkwardly 
for a moment, like he's wondering if that was what he really 
wanted to say (my guess is no), nods and stalks off. Everybody 
observes a moment of silence for his impending death.

Temple. I think. Either this is some time later or it’s a 
different temple, I’m not sure. Paris apologizes for any 
"pain" he may have caused his father. Priam asks Paris if he 
really loves Helen. Yeah, like he's gonna say no at this 
point. Long pause. "You are a great king because you love your 
country so much," Paris starts. Oh, here we go...blah blah yak 
yak "you love *all* of Troy. That is the way I love Helen," he 
finally concludes. Thanks for that long-winded answer, Captain 
Tangent. Priam goes into full "I am Peter O'Tool, watch me act 
circles around everyone" mode and says he's fought many wars 
in his life for land, power, glory, etc. and maybe fighting 
for love makes more sense than any of those reasons. Nah, 
they're all equally stupid. "But *I* won't be the one 
fighting." He pulls out a sword, which Paris stares at... 
lustfully. I'm sorry, but that's what it looks like! Then 
again, I could be influenced by all the homoeroticism that 
somehow manages to surround all of Orlando's movies. Priam 
declares it is the “sword of Troy” and has been carried by its 
leaders for centuries. He hands it to Paris and declares that 
“as long as a Trojan carries it, our people have a future.” 
Paris stares at it some more, likely wondering what the hell 
he’s supposed to do with it. 

Hector and Wifey’s room. Hector is telling Wifey about meeting 
Achilles. “I’ve never seen a spear thrown like that,” he 
mutters in awe. “Obviously you don’t remember the night our 
son was conceived,” she replies. In my head. Incidentally, the 
kid is sucking away at the wooden lion Hector carved for him 
and probably giving himself splinters. Wifey begs Hector not 
to fight. He says Paris is the one fighting tomorrow, not him. 
“50,000 Greeks didn’t cross the sea to watch your brother 
fight,” she argues. Why not? I’m sure they’d find it 
entertaining. Blah blah back and forth. Hector says he doesn’t 
want to fight, he wants to live to see his son grow up, but... 
She says she can’t lose him because she “[wouldn’t] survive.” 
He just kisses her and goes to talk to Paris. Way to reassure 
your wife.

Hector finds Helen trying to escape the palace in a hooded 
cape. He stops her and she cries on his shoulder. She says she 
saw the bodies burning on the pyres and it’s all her fault! 
Wahhh! She wants to go back to her husband so he’ll stop this 
nonsense. Hector says it’s too late (duh, we’ve already 
established this many times over) and Agamemnon doesn’t give a 
rat’s ass about her. She says she won’t let Paris fight her ex 
because she (and everyone else with half a brain) knows he 
doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. She tries 
to make a break for it again and he stops her, saying she is a 
princess of Troy now. Since when? Did I miss something? “My 
brother needs you tonight,” he pleads. I am so not going 
there.
   Chrissy: Will we be seeing that scene?
   Diandra: You wish.
   Chrissy: Yes, I do, actually.

Dawn. Somebody enters Achilles tent along with Patroclus and 
announces that they’re ready to go. Achilles pouts that he’s 
not going anywhere until Agamemnon crawls to him on his hands 
and knees and begs him to come back and fight. The guy leaves 
and Achilles tells Patroclus that he sees the faces of the men 
he killed every night in his dreams and they call to him from 
the banks of the river Styx. There’s some back and forth about 
reasons for fighting and whether or not one should follow 
orders from certain people. “Don’t waste your life following 
some fool’s orders,” Achilles concludes. Then he goes back to 
drinking and moping around. 

Wall of Troy. The Trojan army is ready and waiting. Priam and 
Helen watch from a balcony somewhere safe as Hector and Paris 
ride out. Hector asks Paris if he’s sure about this. Paris 
says “no, but I can’t let Helen think I’m a pansy, so I’m 
trying to prove my manliness to her by doing something 
incredibly stupid and suicidal.” No, he doesn’t really say 
that, but he might as well because it’s the truth. He looks 
back at Helen, who smiles at him angstily. Five hours later 
(roughly) the Greeks finally arrive. Naturally, the Trojan’s 
are vastly outnumbered. Not that that ever means anything. The 
Kings, Ajax and Nestor meet the boys in the middle of the 
field. Agamemnon smirks that it is “valiant” but stupid of 
them to be down on the field instead of hiding behind the 
walls with daddy. Blah blah blah Menelaus asks what kind of 
person would make nice nice with a man and then steal his wife 
in the middle of the night. Paris snits that it was broad 
daylight, actually, and she walked out under her own power. 
Yeah, that’s it. Taunt the guy who could snap you like a twig. 
Brilliant. Menelaus goes to rip his head off, saying 
something about Helen watching him die from the balcony but 
Agamemnon tells him to cool it. Paris does his damnedest to 
pretend that he didn’t just pee himself.

Hector tells Agamemnon to take his men and beat it. Agamemnon 
refrains from laughing and basically says 'not a chance in 
hell'. He lays out his terms: give Helen back to Menelaus and 
Troy must "submit" to his "command" and be ready to fight for 
him at his every whim. Hector tells him to go out in the 
middle of the field, bend over and kiss his own arse... oh, 
wait. Wrong movie. "No son of Troy will ever submit to a 
foreign ruler," he declares. Agamemnon leans closer. "Then 
every son of Troy [dramatic pause] shall die!" Oh, for God's 
sake, somebody just whip out a ruler already and get it over 
with! Paris says he has a better idea and repeats the entire 
dumb kamikaze plan he had the day before. Agamemnon isn’t 
interested. He starts to leave, but Menelaus runs after him, 
all ‘please please PLEASE let me kill him!’ He says Agamemnon 
can attack the city after he kills the little twit. Agamemnon 
thinks about this for about two seconds and relents. 

Hector gives Paris a little pep talk. Paris – who looks scared 
shitless throughout this whole conversation – shakily starts 
giving Hector instructions on what to tell Helen after he dies 
but Hector just tells him to shut up and focus on the fight. 
Paris puts on a helmet that makes him look ridiculous and hugs 
Hector. Meanwhile, Menelaus is standing on the field, swinging 
his sword around impatiently. Paris very slowly walks toward 
Menelaus. He’s shaking so hard you can practically hear the 
pieces of his armor knocking together. Then we get a shot of 
Menelaus from his point of view, with the shape of the helmet 
obscuring half the screen and I wonder how the hell these 
people were able to defend themselves properly with no 
peripheral vision. Menelaus chuckles, throws his shield aside 
and makes taunting gestures. Back in the theater, my mother 
leaned over to me and muttered “this shouldn’t take long.” I 
was inclined to agree with her.

The fight begins. If you could call it a fight. Basically, 
Menelaus whangs the hell out of Paris’ shield. I would like to 
take this moment to compliment Orlando on successfully making 
himself look like a complete yutz. Wait, that didn’t sound 
right. Let me rephrase... I’ve seen “Pirates of the Caribbean” 
and all three “Lord of the Rings” movies. This guy trained 
with the man who taught *Errol Flynn* to sword fight and call 
me biased but I think he’s damn good at it. However, in this 
movie Orlando’s swinging a sword like he’s never held one 
before in his *life*. Seriously, he’s holding it like it 
weights twenty pounds and it’s clearly whooshing by, like, at 
least two feet from Brendan.
   Chrissy: Actually, this reminds me of you trying to play 
    baseball.
   Diandra: (glare) Shut up. You know I hate sports.

Anyway. Paris stumbles and his helmet falls off. Well, this is 
a good start. The Trojans look pained. Agamemnon laughs his 
ass off. Paris makes a few more impotent swings, which 
Menelaus deflects easily, punching Paris in the jaw to add 
insult to injury. A ridiculous amount of blood sprays from 
Paris’ mouth. More wild swinging. There’s a semi-comical 
moment where Menelaus traps Paris’ arm and Paris darts around 
in a circle to escape Menelaus’ sword. Paris tries to slam 
into Menelaus with his shield in desperation. Menelaus easily 
rips it out of his hands and throws it aside. Menelaus twists 
Paris’ arm behind his back and Paris manages to punch him in 
the mouth. Menelaus growls and spits blood and a tooth at the 
camera. Lovely. Then he makes a nasty gash in Paris’ thigh and 
Paris goes down like a sack of bricks. Menelaus taunts him by 
pointing to the crows circling overhead and saying “they’ve 
never tasted prince before”. Paris looks at them worriedly and 
takes another wild swing at Menelaus. Menelaus knocks his 
sword away with ridiculous ease and smashes the hilt of his 
own sword in Paris’ face, knocking him to the ground for, 
like, the tenth time. Okay, seriously, you can stop now. This 
is starting to feel like watching a cute little puppy being 
mauled to death by a bear. 

Helen leaps out of her seat and runs to the edge of the 
balcony, hyperventilating. Menelaus goes to decapitate Paris, 
who turns and sort of crawls toward Hector. “Is this what you 
left me for,” Menelaus shouts toward Helen. Well, the more you 
talk, the less I blame her for it, pal. 
   Chrissy: And really, have you gotten a good look at him?
   Diandra: Yes, yes, we know. 
Paris clings to Hector’s leg like a small child hiding behind 
mommy’s skirt. Menelaus snarls “you coward.” Agamemnon takes 
this opportunity to declare that the Trojan’s have violated 
their agreement and the men should prepare for battle. How 
convenient for him. Menelaus bitches some more to Hector, who 
says the battle is over. And while I don’t think they 
specifically agreed that it would be a battle to the death, 
Paris hinted as much in a previous scene, so no, I don’t think 
it’s over yet. By the way, Paris is bawling his eyes out. He 
may have snot pouring out of his nose, but it’s hard to tell 
with all the blood covering the lower half of his face. 
Basically, he looks like shit. 

Menelaus lunges toward him and, in a move that happens so fast 
you’d miss it if you blinked, Hector shoves Paris’ head down 
and runs Menelaus through with his own sword. And herein lies 
another problem Iliad fans have with this movie: Menelaus was 
not supposed die at this point. In fact, he was still alive at 
the end of the war and he went home with Helen. However, 
considering this movie downplays the involvement of the gods I 
really don’t see how else this scene could have been done. And 
frankly, I don’t have a problem with it because Menelaus’ 
involvement in the story pretty much ended at this point 
anyway. 

Achilles and his Myrmidons watch from the nearby hills as 
Agamemnon screams something unintelligible and the Greeks 
charge. Hector drags a hobbling Paris back to the gate. Paris 
stops suddenly and runs back – toward the charging army – to 
grab the sword of Troy. Idiot. This makes as much sense to me 
as the guys in that Samuel L Jackson movie who went back into 
a war zone for a *flag*. I mean, I understand the symbolism, 
but for crying out loud, it’s a piece of material (or in this 
case, metal). It can be replaced! The person who runs back for 
it can’t be.
   Chrissy: Are you finished?
   Diandra: Was I ranting again?
   Chrissy: Oh yeah.
   Diandra: Sorry.

Anyway, Hector gets their horses and practically shoves Paris 
inside before taking his place in command of the Trojan army. 
Odysseus realizes that the Greeks are running right into range 
of the Trojan archers, but fails to do anything to stop it. 
Achilles mutters something about the stupidity of the Greeks. 
The Greeks slam into the Trojan’s and the first few lines of 
men are killed instantly. Then the arrows start flying and a 
few more rows are taken out. Achilles paces back and forth, 
muttering angrily as the Greeks continue to basically commit 
suicide. 

Hector sees Ajax killing men right and left – actually he 
seems to be the only Greek successfully killing anybody – and 
rides over to attempt spearing him. He gets knocked off his 
horse and the ensuing fight basically mirrors the one between 
Menelaus and Paris except that Hector is obviously a better 
fighter than Paris is. Hector finally manages to spear Ajax, 
who punches him, breaks the shaft of the spear off and starts 
beating Hector with it. No, I’m not kidding. He’s got a spear 
sticking out of him and he’s *still* kicking Hector’s ass. 
Hector finally gets hold of a discarded sword and stabs Ajax, 
wrenching it a few times before Ajax finally dies. Yes, Iliad 
fans, I know Hector was not supposed to kill Ajax. No, I don’t 
care because he would have died, like, a couple days later 
anyway.

More fighting. Odysseus tells Agamemnon they have to retreat 
on account of they’re getting their asses kicked. Agamemnon 
finally relents and orders the men back. The Trojans up in 
Priam’s balcony cheer and Helen and Wifey sigh in relief. The 
Trojan army chases the Greeks for a while, but Hector is smart 
enough to stop them just out of range of the Greek archers. 

Montage of the Greeks collecting the dead – including Menelaus 
- and burning them. Tatijana Tzarikinova wails mournfully. 

Paris flinches as Helen stitches his wound. Sure. He should 
probably be yelping and squirming in pain but now he’s 
suddenly Mr. Tough Guy. “You think I’m a coward,” he says 
bitterly. “I *am* a coward. I knew he would kill me.” Helen 
wisely keeps her mouth shut as he is doing just fine beating 
himself up and doesn’t need her input. Blah blah whine whine 
“I gave up my pride...my honor...just to live.” Gee, is that 
all? I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand the whole glory of 
war and death thing. Frankly, the fact that Paris is smart 
enough to heed his survival instinct makes me respect him more 
than if he had stayed and tried to fight a losing battle just 
because he didn’t want to look cowardly. And I hate the fact 
that Orlando continually referred to Paris as the “anti hero” 
because he would rather spend time with Helen than go out and 
kill people and potentially be killed himself.
   Chrissy: Geez, woman, would you stop spitting on me?
   Diandra: Sorry...was I getting worked up again?
   Chrissy: Worked up? Your face is bright red and you’re 
    hyperventilating! Move on before I’m forced to call the 
    nice men in white lab coats.

Er, okay, so where was I? Helen says Paris challenged a “great 
warrior” and that took a lot of guts. Or stupidity. Take your 
pick. Paris mumbles that he betrayed her. I’m not sure how he 
figures that, but okay. She kisses his arm and goes into a 
continuation of her story of arranged marriages and lost 
innocence. She says Menelaus “lived for fighting” and the 
whole time she was with him she just wanted to “walk into the 
sea and drown”. She just wants a man she can grow old with. 
Yeah, good luck with that. Wait a minute. If Menelaus is dead 
in this version...then she has no reason to go back to Sparta, 
does she? But in the Iliad she went back after the war because 
Paris was dead and therefore she didn’t have any reason to 
stay in Troy, so...does that mean Paris doesn’t die in this 
version? My head hurts.
   Chrissy: Quit trying to analyze it then.
   Diandra: Yeah, but...I...and the...I need some aspirin.

Meanwhile a drunken Agamemnon rants about the Trojans 
expecting them to flee with their tails between their legs. 
Odysseus points out that the men think the whole war was about 
Helen and obviously they don’t need her anymore, so nobody 
would think anything of it if they turned around and went 
home. Bicker sneer argue blah. Odysseus says if they stay it 
will be to “protect Greece” and not Agamemnon’s pride. Protect 
Greece from what, exactly? It’s not like the Trojans were a 
direct threat to the Greek empire or anything. It seems 
incredibly stupid to go to war with a country just because you 
*think* that they could potentially be a threat even though 
they’ve never actually done anything to warrant an invasion. 
[Pause] Wow. History *does* repeat itself. The argument turns 
to Achilles and whether or not Agamemnon should just suck it 
up and apologize to him. Agamemnon says it doesn’t matter 
because he won’t listen to him anyway. Odysseus offers to talk 
to him and Nestor points out that he’ll probably want Briseis 
back. Agamemnon says fine, he can have her and swears – in a 
hilariously defensive voice – that he didn’t do anything to 
her. Odysseus asks where she is. Agamemnon says he gave her to 
the men because “they need *some* amusement after today.” Oy.

Cut to the men tossing Briseis back and forth as if she were a 
hacky sack, shouting words like “bitch” and “whore” and 
laughing like the stupid pigs they are. A couple of them hold 
her down while another picks up a branding iron. Why on earth 
would they have needed to bring a branding iron with them? 
Briseis slaps him. He slaps her back and goes to brand her 
arm. Then everything sort of pauses and someone shouts 
“Achilles” as Achilles yanks the guy’s arm away, brands him 
and then waves the iron threateningly at the others. That 
choreography seemed a bit shaky, but okay. The others cower in 
fear and Achilles picks up Briseis and carries her to his 
tent.

Inside, Achilles asks if she’s all right and wrings out a wet 
cloth that was conveniently near by. He says she had a lot of 
courage fighting those men. She says it wasn’t courage, it was 
self defense. Achilles moves the cloth towards her face and 
Briesis smacks his hand away. He gives her a look and tries 
again. She slaps him away. Again. He throws the cloth at her. 
She picks it up and slaps him with it. Diandra pokes her head 
in the tent and shrieks "CHILDREN! Cut it out!" Achilles looks 
up from where he has Briesis in a headlock and asks "who the 
hell are you?" "It doesn't matter," Diandra snaps. "Now stop 
this nonsense and start acting like adults!" Achilles lets go 
reluctantly and mutters "she started it!" Hmm...maybe I should 
talk to my doctor about giving me those antipsychotics...

Achilles finally tosses the towel aside and shoves a tray at 
her, ordering her to eat, which she of course doesn't. "I've 
known men like you my whole life," she ventures. "Soldiers 
understand nothing but war. Peace confuses them." He concludes 
that she hates these soldiers. She says she pities them. He 
sneers that Trojan soldiers have died to protect her and 
deserve more than her pity. Like what? Her undying gratitude? 
Pshah. She asks why he chose the life of a great warrior. He 
says he didn't - he was born into it. He asks why she chose to 
love a god as the romance is decidedly "one-sided". Speaking 
of romance, it should be noted that the background music in 
this scene has a lot of soft wind instruments. Can you see 
where this is heading? 

"Do you enjoy [something that sounds like 'perfecking'] me," 
she snits. Hang on a second while I check the subtitles... 
apparently she said "provoking". Note to Rose Byrne: I know 
doing a scene with Brad Pitt must be distracting, but could 
you be a bit less unintelligible? Achilles gives her a 
condensed lesson on Greek mythology. I had to memorize the 
names of about 40 gods - and what they were the gods of - when 
I was in junior high. Amazingly, I remember almost all of the 
ones he mentions here. "All the gods are to be feared and 
respected," she declares for reasons I've forgotten and which 
my notes don't make clear. And no, I’m not going to go back 
and check. Bite me.

Achilles says he'll tell her a secret: "the gods envy us... 
because we're mortal... any moment might be our last... 
everything's more beautiful because we are doomed." Huh. 
Interesting angle. "You will never be lovelier than you are 
now. We will never be here again." Okay, now he's just being 
pessimistic.
   Chrissy: Is this scene nearly over yet? I'm getting bored.
   Diandra: Shhhh...I'm trying to do a recap here.
   Chrissy: Really? 'Cause from where I'm sitting it looks 
    like you're mostly drooling over Brad's bare shoulders.
   Diandra: That too.
She thinks about this for about five hours and says "I thought 
you were a dumb brute. I could have forgiven a dumb brute." 
Heh. 

Night. Or at least later that night. Achilles is sleeping. A 
disembodied hand holds a knife to his throat as JH strikes up 
the Dissonant Chords of Potential Hero Assassination. Achilles 
opens his eyes to find a skittish looking Briseis and tells 
her to go for it. She asks why he isn't afraid. Because he's 
*tortured*, sweetie, haven't you figured that out yet? He says 
everyone dies eventually so he really doesn't give a shit. She 
says he'll kill more Trojans if she doesn't kill him, but if 
she really meant business she should have just KILLED HIM 
ALREADY INSTEAD OF TRYING TO TALK HIM TO DEATH. He flips her 
over and...he's naked again! Hallelujah! Happy Birthday to me! 
I...

This is Chris. Achilles pulls the hem of Briseis' dress up and 
kisses her while the cheesy "romantic" music reaches an 
overdramatic climax. 
   Diandra: Hey! Don't be dissing James Horner! (Goes back to 
   drooling)
Briseis finally drops the knife, which makes a loud clattering 
noise despite the fact that the "floor" is made of sand. I 
mean, unless it hit a pile of swords and armor I'm thinking 
somebody in the sound department made a mistake. He hikes the 
dress up to her waist and the music just *dies* suddenly so we 
can hear them kiss noisily for a few seconds. Why, I have no 
idea, but I'm drowning in drool over here...
   Diandra: Fusssshhhhnnnnnuuuuhhhhhhh.....(jams a bar of     
   chocolate in her mouth and snatches the keyboard back)

Mohninh. Ahem. Excuse me. Morning. Pretty sunrise over the 
water...people milling around the ships. Briseis is sprawled 
out in bed, snoring away. Achilles is sitting nearby, 
unfortunately fully dressed, watching her sleep. Creepy Eyes, 
whose sole job seems to consist of relaying messages to 
Achilles, pokes his head in. Achilles stops him mid-sentence 
so he doesn't wake Briseis. Awww. [Melts]
   Chrissy: You are so easy to please.
   Diandra: Where Brad Pitt is concerned? Hell yeah.

Achilles steps outside and orders Creepy Eyes to have the men 
load the ships because they're leaving. Then he sits next to 
Odysseus for a drink and some idle conversation. Odysseus says 
Achilles is a "proud man" (read: asshole) but he "knows when 
he's made a mistake." Achilles sneers that Agamemnon sent 
Odysseus to make his apologies for him because he's a 
spineless weasel. Odysseus says choices are never simple for 
kings blah blah blah. "Ithica cannot afford an enemy like 
Agamemnon." Yeah, okay, this conversation is long and 
philosophical and shit so here's the gist: Odysseus wants 
Achilles to stay and keep fighting because the men need him 
and he was "born for his war." Achilles says he respects 
Odysseus most of any of the Grecian kings, but...no. Patroclus 
wanders by and asks if they're really leaving. No, Achilles 
just likes to screw with people. He rants and raves at 
Achilles for walking away from the battle  and accuses him of 
betraying his countrymen just because he hates Agamemnon. 
"Someone has to lose," Achilles says simply. 

Back to the Trojan council. Guy #1 says the gods are favoring 
them now and this is their chance to destroy the Greeks. 
Hector points out that the Myrmidons weren't fighting, so 
there must be some sort of rift among the Greek forces. 
Attacking their ships "would only unify them". He thinks they 
should just let them keep trying to get in, because "our walls 
can't be breached. We can beat them back again. Yesterday the 
Greeks underestimated us. We should not return the favor." 
Smart man. Mostly. Priam asks the soothsayer if he's sure 
about the "omens". Soothsayer says the Greeks raided the 
temple, so the gods should be on the Trojans' side now. Priam 
decides this is good enough and orders Hector to have the men 
prepare for an attack at daybreak. 

Night. Achilles and Briseis are cuddling in bed and good GOD, 
would you look at those pecs?! This is Chris. Briseis asks if 
she's still a captive. He says she's his guest. She points out 
that where she comes from "guests" can come and go as they 
please. He tells her she should leave then. Yeah, like that'll 
happen. She asks if he's really going to leave the war. He 
points out that she left Troy. Yes, but as she just pointed 
out she did not do so by choice so this is not exactly the 
best comparison now, is it?

Sometime later, Achilles wakes up...
   Diandra: (SQUEAL) Look at the muscles on those arms! 
   (Chrissy hands Diandra a chocolate bar, but Diandra can't   
   tear her eyes off the screen long enough to notice it)
...apparently sensing the impending attack. Meanwhile, Trojans 
scramble around firing flaming arrows into the sand or rocks 
up on the hill somewhere.
   Diandra: (finally coming out of her daze) Why are you still 
   recapping? Give me that...
The Greeks on watch alert the masses but as nobody has any 
idea what the hell the Trojans are trying to do, they just end 
up gawking stupidly. Also, this is what they call "daybreak"? 
'Cause it looks like the dead of night to me. 

The Trojans send giant balls of hay rolling, which light on 
fire when they reach the field of flaming arrows. Lots of 
flames and explosions and screaming and chaos follows. 
Suddenly it's dawn and Hector starts an eerie drum beat by 
banging his spear against his shield. This scene is pretty 
cool, but really hard to recap. The Trojans march as the war 
music revs up, accompanied by an Angrily Wailing Choir. Where 
the hell did all these people come from? There's, like, a 
couple thousand more soldiers on the Trojan side than they 
started out with. Whatever. 

The Heroic Brass returns and Odysseus mutters "Achilles." Brad 
Pitt's body double runs by the camera in full armor, but since 
his face is blurry and obscured and there are no close-ups 
whatsoever we know it's probably not Achilles. I have to hand 
it to the casting coordinator and the director though because 
from the front he looks so much like Brad that I almost 
believe it really is him. Although from the back, he doesn't 
look nearly muscled enough for me to find it conceivable that 
anybody would mistake this guy for Achilles. Anyway. Hector 
sneers at him and gives an impassioned war cry. Woah. I just 
looked up to find the DVD paused on a shot of his upraised arm 
and damn his muscles are *huge*. His upper arm is practically 
the size of my thigh! Yeesh. Sorry. Where was I?

So everybody charges. From a distance, “Achilles” armor looks 
far too big on him. Nice realism and continuity there, but it 
kind of makes the Greeks look all the more stupid for not 
noticing something's wrong here. He's also fighting sort of 
clumsily. Not as clumsily as Paris, but still. Fighting. 
Shouting. Spurting blood. Screaming. Hector and "Achilles" 
meet in the middle somewhere and everybody else clears a 
circle so they can fight without interference. The camera is 
still very purposely avoiding focusing on "Achilles" face the 
whole time. Then Hector slits his throat and he falls over 
gurgling and we *know* it's not really Achilles. There is 
actually a drum roll as Hector peels off "Achilles" helmet to 
reveal...Patroclus. Duh. Everybody gapes in shock, the actual 
battle having apparently ended about five minutes ago. Hector 
looks ill as he stabs Patroclus to finish him off. He and 
Odysseus call it a day and everybody heads home. Odysseus 
tells Hector, for no obvious reason, that he just killed 
Achilles' “cousin”. 

The Greeks return to camp and Creepy Eyes reluctantly summons 
Achilles from his tent. Achilles comes out with the closest 
thing he's had to a smile this whole movie on his face. It 
disappears immediately as he sees the men returning from 
battle and he accuses Creepy Eyes of going against his orders. 
Creepy Eyes whimpers that he didn't lead the Myrmidons into 
battle, "we thought you did." Pause. The wheels turn in 
Achilles head and he asks where Patroclus is. Creepy Eyes says 
"we thought he was you". He looked just like Achilles! He wore 
all his armor and greaves and shit. He even moved like him! 
Are they kidding? First of all, Patroclus is a freaking *twig* 
compared to Achilles. What the hell did they think was 
accounting for the sudden massive loss of muscle tone? And 
second, the fact that he was uncharacteristically silent 
should have been a clue, don't you think? And if he wasn't 
silent, you'd think they'd have known it wasn't his voice. 
Then again, maybe they really are that stupid. “My lord, 
you've lost weight! And your lisp is gone!” If you'll excuse 
me for a moment, I'm gonna go pound my forehead against a wall 
for a while. Achilles smacks Creepy Eyes and Briseis comes 
running out as he tells him Hector killed his "cousin". 
Achilles promptly flies into a rage and tries to choke both 
him and Briseis before marching off to sulk.

Night. Troy. Hector shows Wifeypoo a secret passage out of the 
city. She suspiciously asks why she needs this information. He 
says he wants her to be ready because she'll have to take 
their kid and as many people as possible and run like hell 
when the Greeks kill him and take over the city. Then he 
angsts that Patroclus was just a CHILD, damnit and he KILLED 
him and WAAAAHHHHH!!!

Patroclus' funeral. Tatiana Tsarikarina wails. Mournfully. 
"That boy has just saved this war for us," Agamemnon gloats as 
Achilles lights the pyre. Back in Troy, Hector watches his son 
sleep. Yeah, that’s not a big ole’ heap of foreshadowing 
there. Nope. Meanwhile, Helen watches from a balcony as Paris 
shoots arrows into a straw dummy in the courtyard below and 
looking really pissed. Nope, no foreshadowing here...

Morning. Pretty silhouetted shot of Achilles standing on the 
dock clutching something I assume belonged to Patroclus. He 
marches back to his tent and orders Creepy Eyes to get his 
armor.

And now we get a montage of Hector and Achilles putting on 
their battle gear, complete with gratuitous shots of naked 
chests. No, I’m not complaining. Tanika Tzarikitikitava moans. 
Hector takes one last look at his wife and leaves the room. 
She wakes up before he’s even all the way out the door (what’d 
I say about the clairvoyance, huh?) and stares after him 
angstily. 

Achilles climbs in his chariot and Creepy Eyes climbs in after 
him. “No,” Achilles growls and Creepy Eyes steps down with an 
expression resembling that of a scolded puppy. Briseis runs up 
and begs him not to do this because Hector is her cousin and 
yadda yadda. He ignores her and takes off. 

The royal family (minus a couple dozen) waits on the balcony. 
They’re all wearing similar robes so I guess I’ll have to 
assume that some of these people are Priam’s never-mentioned 
other children. Achilles rides up to the city wall and Hector 
stops the archers from shooting him on the spot. Achilles gets 
off his chariot and screams Hector’s name, his voice echoing 
off the walls. He continues to do this throughout the rest of 
this scene. Hector kneels in front of Priam and apologizes for 
everything he might have done his entire life. “HECTOR!” Priam 
says “may the gods be with you,” and Hector kindly refrains 
from rolling his eyes. He nods and gets up. Priam halts him 
from leaving and adds that “no father ever had a better son.” 
Ouch. Playing favorites much? Hector looks shaken but his 
tough guy act doesn’t allow him to formulate a response. 

“HECTOR!” Hector shakes hands with council guy #1 and moves on 
to Priam’s second favorite son...or maybe 49th, right in front 
of the guy who wears flowers in his hair and plays with the 
ancient Greek equivalent of Barbie dolls. “You’re the best man 
I know,” Paris breaths. And yes, I’m sure there’s a HoYay joke 
in there somewhere but...incest. Ew. Hector hugs him and tells 
him he’s a prince of Troy and “I know you’ll make me proud.” 
Paris doesn’t look so sure, which is understandable. Hector 
kisses his forehead and walks away. Paris looks...I don’t 
know, ill? Wary? Resigned? I suppose it could just be 
indigestion. “HECTOR!”

Hector climbs down from the balcony and is greeted by his wife 
and son. She whimpers that he doesn’t have to go. He tells her 
to “remember what I told you” and kisses his son. The baby 
looks up at him like he senses the gravity of the situation. 
Or maybe I’m just projecting acting ability onto everything in 
this movie including inanimate objects. “HECTOR!” Hector pokes 
his head outside and yells “I’M COMING, DAMNIT, KEEP YOUR 
PANTS ON!” I wish. 
   Chrissy: You wish he’d say that or you wish Achilles would 
    keep his pants on?
   Diandra: Oh, he can keep his pants on. I really don’t care. 
    His shirt, however, has definitely got to go.
The baby with incredible timing starts to cry. How did they 
get him to do all of this on cue? Was that just luck or are 
there thousands of feet of film lying on a cutting room floor 
somewhere wherein various crew members made sudden, loud 
noises off camera, trying to get him to cry at the right 
moment? Wifey cries along with him as Hector leaves and then 
goes up to the balcony to watch.

“HEEEEECCCCCTTTTTOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” Hector slowly 
collects his spear and waits for some guys to open the gates. 
Helen appears behind him, looking all beautiful and nymph-
like. They stare at each other for a moment, then he puts on 
his helmet and she lowers her head. Oh, the subtext.

And now for the big showdown. “It’s about fucking time you got 
here,” Achilles says in a raspy whisper. “It’s a long way from 
the balcony to the door,” Hector replies. “And I had to say 
goodbye to everybody seeing as I’m all heroic and I know I’m 
dead meat.” Except that it ends up sounding more like Hector 
asking Achilles to promise that the winner allow the loser 
proper funeral rites and Achilles saying not a chance in 
Hades. He takes off his helmet and snarls “now you know who 
you’re fighting.” Hector takes off his own helmet. He says he 
wished it had been Achilles he’d killed (yeah, that’s right, 
taunt the angry man with big muscles who can win a fight 
against six burly guys with one hand tied behind his back) but 
at least he gave Patroclus the “honor he deserved.” Achilles 
sneers something only partly coherent about killing him and 
all the people in the underworld calling him “the fool who 
thought he killed Achilles.” 

And we go right to the fighting. The lead drummer is fast 
asleep and therefore misses his cue so JH leaps over the 
conductor’s stand and whacks him with his baton. He wakes up, 
startled, and whangs his drum with more force than was 
probably necessary and the rest of the drummers join in, 
several beats off and accenting notes at seemingly random 
intervals. (I’m teasing, of course. This is classic James 
Horner – mismatching the beats and crescendos with the action 
on screen just to screw with audience expectations.) Yes, the 
fight is awesome and they look totally cool and all but I 
can’t really recap fight scenes with no dialogue or intricate 
choreography, so I’ll just say clang clang clang. They manage 
to break both of their spears and switch to swords so the 
sound guys have an excuse to play a bunch of neat whistling 
and twanging sound effects at full volume. Achilles makes sure 
to get in a couple of his patented Leaps of Death. Meanwhile, 
the reaction shots of the royal family up in the balcony show 
lots of wincing and grimacing. 

Clang clang clang. Hector swipes at Achilles, who staggers 
back and looks stunned. Then Hector lunges at him, seemingly 
running him through. Sigh. Note to writer(s) (or Mr. Petersen 
or whoever came up with this idea): fake outs don't really 
work when the audience already knows who's going to win. I 
mean, it's not like this is an original story or anything. 
Achilles kills Hector; Paris kills Achilles. There. What? Oh, 
that is *not* a spoiler, shut up! If you think that’s a 
spoiler, I’ve got another one for you: at the end of 
“Titanic”? The ship sinks. Achilles pushes him away and he 
trips on a rock and hits the dirt. Helen looks away uneasily, 
Priam looks pissed as hell and Wifey collapses to the ground, 
unable to watch. Achilles sneers “get up” and throws his 
shield aside. Hector crawls over to grab one of the broken 
spears and starts swinging both weapons at Achilles. 
Unfortunately, he’s clearly getting worn out so his accuracy 
is pretty much non-existent. Achilles gives him a wound almost 
identical to Paris’, but instead of turning tail and hobbling 
away Hector keeps fighting. Yeah, we get it. Blah blah hero 
worship. 

Clang clang clang. Hector is just swinging randomly now, 
totally exhausted and yet it’s still an awesome fight. 
Achilles relieves him of his weapon, whirls around and stabs a 
broken spear into Hector's shoulder. Hector drops to his knees 
and gasps and chokes painfully. Priam closes his eyes in 
defeat. Or maybe denial. Paris looks like somebody just 
bludgeoned his pet rabbit to death and JH pokes Tatarina 
Tzarikoria with his baton to make her wailing even more 
mournful. Achilles then rams his sword into Hector's chest to 
finish him off. Wifey flinches and starts bawling as she 
senses she has just become a widow. Helen tries to comfort 
her, looking oddly heartbroken herself. Priam shakes his head, 
enraged and distraught and basically looking like somebody 
just ripped his heart out of his chest, threw it on the ground 
and stomped on it a few times. Ladies and Gentlemen: Peter 
O'Tool. Paris is somewhere between stunned denial and seething 
anger. I love these people.

Achilles drags Hector’s body all the way back to the Greek 
camp while Tzarina Tarivskya continues to wail. He marches 
into his tent. Briseis takes one look at him and starts 
gasping and sobbing. Kudos to Ms. Byrne on this scene. Then 
again, I think I’m getting to the point where any of these 
actors could just stare into space with a totally blank 
expression and I would read something obscure into it and then 
gush about their acting ability. 
   Chrissy: You mean like you did with Orlando a minute ago?
   Diandra: Oh, shut up, I did not.
Achilles splashes water on his face and glowers at Briseis. 
Night. Achilles sharpens his sword...and no, that is not a 
euphemism...and Briseis (who has stopped crying in favor of 
staring numbly at him) says “you lost your cousin. Now you’ve 
taken mine. When does it end?” “It never ends,” he gruffs. 

Someone in a cloak enters Achilles’ tent. It’s Priam. He falls 
to his knees in front of Achilles and kisses his hands. 
Achilles stares at him with an expression of "who the fuck are 
you and what the fuck are you doing?" "I kiss the hands of the 
man who killed my son," Priam declares. His eyes are totally 
red-rimmed, by the way. He really *looks* like he's been 
crying his heart out all day. Ladies and Gentlemen: Peter 
O'Tool. Achilles leaps away from him and demands to know how 
he got here. Priam says he knows his country better than the 
Greeks which is pretty flimsy and I agree with the person who 
said the watchmen probably weren’t expecting the KING OF TROY 
to go traipsing through the Greek camp into Achilles’ tent in 
the middle of the night. Achilles helps him sit down and says 
he could have his “head on a spit in the blink of an eye”. 
Priam asks if Achilles thinks he’s really afraid of death now. 
Well, considering there seem to be only two crowned princes of 
Troy and one is dead, I think I can guess who would become 
king if he died. I’d think that would be enough incentive for 
him to want to stay alive as long as possible. Priam pleads 
with Achilles to give Hector back so he can have a proper 
burial. 

Okay, while this is a great scene, I’m just going to skip over 
some dialogue here... "I knew your father," Priam says. He was 
a good man. Good pirate. Oops, wrong movie. He died young, but 
at least he didn't have to see his son die. Achilles blinks 
and continues scowling, but now he's fidgeting nervously. 
Priam moves closer to him and he looks even more 
uncomfortable. Priam says he can't change what happened, but 
he's begging Achilles to let him bury Hector. Achilles says 
even if he lets him, it won't change anything. "You're still 
my enemy in the morning." "You're still my enemy tonight," 
Priam fires back. "But even enemies can show respect." 
Achilles angsts for a bit, then tells Priam to meet him 
outside and goes off to retrieve the body. 

Achilles breaks down into tears as he wraps Hector's body for 
the trip back to Troy. He tells Hector that they will meet 
again soon and calls him "my brother". Woah. I just... Ladies 
and Gentlemen: Brad Pitt. 

Hector’s body is placed on Priam’s chariot. Achilles tells him 
“your son was the best I’ve fought” and promises no Greek will 
attack Troy for twelve days while they conduct funeral rites. 
Briseis runs up suddenly and hugs a baffled Priam, who says 
they all thought she was dead. Great. Here we go with the 
tearful goodbyes. Achilles apologizes for hurting her and says 
she’s free to go. He gives her whatever the thing was he was 
clutching earlier and they hold hands for a second. Then he 
snaps back into tough guy mode and tells them they should 
leave. “You’re a far better king than the one leading this 
army,” are his parting words to Priam. Then he and Briseis 
stare at each other as the chariot takes off. Naturally.

Agamemnon’s tent. He’s ranting and foaming at the mouth 
because Achilles promised the Greeks wouldn’t attack Troy 
despite the fact that they’re army is now minus a leader and 
therefore vulnerable. Rant rant bitch spit chewing of various 
pieces of scenery. Nestor says that’s a moot point because 
they still can’t get past the walls of the city. Agamemnon 
rants that he’ll smash those walls if it costs him 40,000 
Greeks, so help him Zeus! Nestor and Odysseus roll their eyes 
and sigh, politely refraining from asking how Agamemnon plans 
on fitting his giant ego through the gates.

Night. Odysseus sits by the fire with a bunch of extras. A guy 
next to him is carving a wooden horse for his son. The camera 
lingers on this for several minutes while anvils fall from the 
sky and crash into the sand all around them. Finally, a light 
bulb goes on over Odysseus’ head.

Some time much later (presumably), Odysseus is overseeing the 
building of the Trojan Horse when Agamemnon comes up, 
practically vibrating with excitement, and purrs something 
about this brilliant plan to make the “sheep” invite the 
“wolves” to dinner. Odysseus looks less than proud of himself.

Elsewhere, Achilles sits next to Creepy Eyes and apologizes 
for hitting him earlier. What? Didn’t that happen several days 
ago or something? Oh, screw it. Creepy Eyes apologizes for 
disappointing Achilles and Achilles apologizes for 
disappointing Creepy Eyes and for God’s sake, could we move it 
along? I’m on page 30 here! Achilles tells him to take his men 
and go home. “I have my own battle to fight.” And he doesn’t 
want them to be part of it, apparently. He tangents that it’s 
a “beautiful night” and declares “this is the last order I 
give you.”

Troy. Wailing choir that sounds computer generated. Priam 
kisses Hector’s forehead and he and Paris light the pyre. Why 
are there no coins on Hector’s eyes? I thought that was part 
of the whole “proper burial” package. Wifey cries and tries to 
act stoic.

Twelve days later a guy – probably a scout – gallops madly 
into Troy to announce what he discovered on shore. Priam, 
Paris and a few other guys arrive to find dead bodies, 
wreckage and a giant wooden horse. Priam notes the weird marks 
on the dead guys’ faces and declares them victims of plague. 
And since this is light years before medical examiners and 
forensics and CSIs nobody questions this. The soothsayer says 
this is the will of the gods, who wanted revenge for the 
Greeks robbing the temple. Priam looks at the horse and asks 
what the hell it is. Somebody says it’s “an offering to 
Poseidon” to assure a safe trip home and it’s a gift and they 
should go ahead and bring it into the temple. “I think we 
should burn it,” Paris declares, for no reason other than to 
foreshadow the inevitable by making an alternative suggestion 
that the audience knows damn well is never going to happen. 
“It’s a *gift* to the *gods*,” council guy #1 snaps 
condescendingly. Paris urges his father to burn it anyway. 

So, of course, they drag it right on into the middle of the 
city and people start dancing around it and drinking. The 
Couple of Doom watch from a balcony. “Look at them,” Paris 
grumbles. “You’d think that their prince had never died.” 
“You’re their prince now,” she says. “Make your brother 
proud.” Paris stares into space...okay, maybe blankly, but I’m 
going to say he has an expression of sickening dread and is 
praying that his father never dies.

Meanwhile, the lookout finds all the Greek ships crammed into 
a nearby beach hidden from view but is killed before he can 
warn anyone.

Night. Several trap doors open on the horse and ropes are 
thrown down. Odysseus and a few others go one way, Achilles 
goes another. They start killing the Trojans who are passed 
out drunk on the streets and totally defenseless. Yeah, 
because that’s honorable. One guy climbs the lookout tower and 
waves a torch. The gates are opened and the waiting Greek army 
floods in. Tajika Tarivskyana moans and wails softly. This and 
some very muffled voices is pretty much all we hear as chaos 
erupts and the Greeks start killing Trojans left and right. 
Have I mentioned how much I love James Horner? Because I do. 
We hear what sounds like women screaming, but it’s muted and 
echoed in such a way that it sounds disturbingly like 
shrieking ghosts. It’s pretty ingenious, really. Props to the 
sound guys for that. Chaos. Carnage. People being thrown from 
buildings. I know it’s all been done before, but as far as I’m 
concerned it’s still pretty powerful. The sound finally kicks 
in fully, along with the Dramatic Brass and the Drums of Doom 
and Destruction.  

Achilles scales a wall, kills a guard, disables another and 
demands to know where Briseis is. The guard says he doesn’t 
know and whimpers that he has a son. Achilles, who has 
apparently gone soft now, tells him to get his son out of Troy 
and runs off to find Briseis while Iliad fans shriek 
indignantly. 

Chaos. Screaming. Flames. Statues falling. Priam watches from  
a window some distance away, crying like a man who has nothing 
left to live for. Ladies and Gentlemen...
   Chrissy: Peter O’Tool, yes, yes, WE GET IT! Where’s 
   Orlando?
Ahem. Meanwhile, Achilles is running around shouting for 
Briseis and Briseis is running around shouting for Paris.  
Wifey breathily tells the Couple of Doom that they have to 
leave. Paris grabs some weapons and follows them to the 
tunnel. 
   Achilles: BRISEIS!
   Briseis: PARIS!
   Diandra: ADRIENE!
   Chrissy: JACK!
   Diandra: [Blink] What? 
   Chrissy: “Titanic”? Jack and Rose spent, like, half the 
    movie running around screaming each other’s names?
   Diandra: Whatever, dude.

Briseis is nearly trampled by a beautiful white runaway horse. 
Was the royal family keeping horses right in the palace or did 
it get lost while escaping from the stables? Is she in the 
stables? What? Where? Who? Oh, forget it. Speaking of horses, 
the wooden one is on fire. The camera pans around Agamemnon, 
who is screaming “let Troy burn!” Could somebody put a muzzle 
on him already?

Tunnel. Paris has apparently ditched most of the weapons he 
had. He tells Helen he’s staying because he can’t leave his 
father alone and blah blah. She yelps that the city is “dead” 
and being rapidly burned into a pile of ancient Greek ruins. 
He responds by pulling aside the nearest person and asking for 
his name. Turns out it’s Aneas, who was apparently a lot older 
in the legend than the guy playing him here. Paris gives him 
the sword of Troy and blithers some of the same speech his 
father gave to him and tells him to find a new home for the 
people of Troy. Like in Italy, perhaps. Wifey appears and 
breathily announces that Briseis wasn’t in her room. Paris 
says he’ll find her. Or she’ll find him. Whichever comes 
first. He kisses Wifey and the baby and they scamper off. Then 
he argues with Helen some more about whether he should go with 
her or not and oh, just let him go already. At least then you 
won’t have to hear him bitch and moan about what a coward he 
is for not doing something. “We will be together again. In 
this world or the next,” he promises. Gee, I’ve never heard 
that line before. Or since. [insert eye roll here] They kiss 
and he runs off.

The Greeks reach the door to the palace (I think) and some 
Trojans try to hold the door shut while the new commander of 
the Trojan army gives a pep talk. Paris rushes in to join 
them. The door break down and more chaos ensues. Paris darts 
over to the stairs some distance away and fires arrows while 
everybody else grapples below. Then Briseis apparently runs 
past upstairs because he suddenly hears her shouting his name 
and takes off running in her direction while Odysseus kills 
the newly appointed Trojan general.

Greeks start raiding another temple (or maybe it’s the same 
one, I don’t know, I’ve totally lost all sense of direction 
here), toppling more statues along the way. Priam staggers 
through all the chaos and screams “have you no honor?!” 
Agamemnon takes this opportunity to stab him in the back while 
the music hits a wildly dramatic crescendo. He leaves, his 
pointy tail flicking merrily behind him and Priam dies.

Meanwhile, Achilles is still searching for Briseis, who is 
kneeling in front of a statue, praying and crying. Agamemnon 
comes up behind her and smarms “too late for prayer 
priestess.” He pulls her up by her hair and smarms some more 
about how he nearly lost the war because of her and Achilles, 
who coincidentally enters the room at that moment. Apparently 
he’s grown incredibly slow, however, as he takes another five 
minutes to get to her, giving Agamemnon enough time to gloat 
some more about how he’s going to make Briseis his slave girl 
and she can scrub his floors and...well, he never gets to say 
what else she’ll be doing but you can tell by his suggestive 
leer that it probably doesn’t involve baking. As he talks, she 
reveals a concealed knife to the camera, which she jams into 
his neck, glaring victoriously. He dies and Clytemenstra’s 
screams of outrage can be heard all the way from Mycenae.

Briseis starts running away and is grabbed by a couple 
soldiers who proceed to toss her around and basically recreate 
the branding scene from about twenty pages ago. Achilles 
swoops in and kills them both. And three...two...one...cue 
Paris. He sees Achilles veeeeerrrrry sloooooowwwwwwly helping 
Briseis up off the ground and whips out his bow and an arrow. 
Briseis screams “no” just before the arrow spears through the 
back of Achilles' ankle and all action practically grinds to a 
halt while he shouts in pain so we can fully acknowledge the 
realization of the whole "Achilles' heel" legend. He gasps and 
groans for, like, ten minutes while Briseis screams at Paris 
to stop and Paris runs closer to get a better angle. Achilles 
gets up, sword in hand, although I don’t know what he thinks 
he’s going to do because Paris is at least fifty feet away. 
THWACK. An arrow hits him in the chest and he falters, 
staggering a bit. Paris looks surprised that he’s still 
standing, which is not unreasonable seeing as he was hit in 
his Achilles tendon. He shouldn’t be able to walk at all, he 
should be writhing on the ground in agony. Say it with me: 
suspension of disbelief. 

Achilles rips the arrow out with a growl and staggers toward 
Paris again, looking really pissed. THWACK. Falter. Briseis 
crawls toward Paris, screaming. Are her legs broken or 
something? GET UP LADY. Stagger. Achilles starts looking less 
pissed and more like a wounded animal. THWACK. Achilles stops 
and blinks a couple times. Briseis finally gets her ass up and 
runs to Paris, begging him to stop. Achilles raises his sword 
determinedly. Seriously, does he think he could hit Paris by 
*throwing* it from that distance or something? THWACK. And he 
finally drops to his knees and starts plucking all the arrows 
out of his chest. Briseis kneels beside him and blubbers. He 
tells her it’s “all right.” Paris creeps closer and watches in 
a cloud of confusion as they hug. Achilles says “you gave me 
peace [or, you know “peash”] in a lifetime of war.” Aw. Gag. 
She kisses him. Paris, totally confused now, tells her she has 
to come with him *now*. Achilles tells her to go. She shakes 
her head. Oh, for god’s sake, woman. So, the guys spend the 
next ten minutes or so trying to convince her to leave without 
ever moving from their marks, thereby insuring that the one 
scene Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom have together does not 
involve them actually being on screen at the same time. The 
sound of a woman shrieking blares over the soundtrack.
   Chrissy: That was you, sweetie.
   Diandra: Oh, it was? My bad.

Shouting and banging signals the approaching Greeks. Briseis 
kisses Achilles a couple more times and finally lets Paris 
drag her away. Achilles breathes a sigh of relief and then 
collapses in the grass and dies as the Greeks gather around 
and stare. And since he pulled all the arrows out of his 
chest, all they see is the one in his heel and a bunch of 
scattered arrows on the grass around him. Thus, a legend is 
born. Can I just say that I loved the way they did that? I can 
totally picture something like this.

Funeral. Odysseus puts coins on Achilles’ eyes and says “find 
peace, my brother.” This is Tatiyana Tzarikovovich’s cue to 
wail mournfully one last time as Odysseus lights the pyre and 
starts his ending voice over. “If they ever tell my story, let 
them say I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like the 
winter wheat, but these names will never die.” CLUNK! OW! All 
right already! “Let them say I lived in the time of Hector, 
tamer of horses. Let them say I lived in the time of 
Achilles." And we fade to black and go into what may be JH’s 
best theme song yet, the lyrics of which are as follows: 
Remember me. Remember me. Remember me damnit. 

I think it’s clear that Wolfgang Peterson knew the audience 
for this movie was going to be mostly female. I counted the 
number of instances of partial nudity and realized that only 
one female was ever less than fully dressed at any time and it 
was only for a couple seconds and could very well have been a 
body double. On the other hand, there were ELEVEN scenes that 
featured Brad, Orlando or Eric parading around without shirts.
   Chrissy: And you’re complaining...why?
   Diandra: I never said I was complaining. Just stating a 
    fact. Excuse me, I have to go...rewind...something...


~Diandra