Troy [Special Edition - Director's Cut]

O'Toole plays the aged King Priam of Troy, and just listening to this actor's voice is enough to warrant the price of a movie ticket. As the old saying goes, he could make the phone book sound interesting. Priam's conversations with his sons and later with Achilles are some of the most affecting parts of the story.

Pitt is appropriately peevish and temperamental as Achilles, but he never seems particularly heroic, just foolhardy. In Greek myths, Achilles was the son of a mortal, King Peleus, and the sea nymph Thetis. One story about him is that as a baby his mother dipped into the waters of the River Styx, making him almost totally immune to wounds except for the tiny portion of his heel by which she held him. Thus, we get our expression about an "Achilles heel" being a vulnerable spot. Well, here we have no such sea-nymph mother (except that during one of the few times we see her, she is collecting shells by the seashore), and Achilles' courage in battle seems primarily to come from some innate brashness on his part. Besides being a sulker and a slacker, he's something of a reckless show-off, too. He simply says he doesn't fear death. We never know why; the movie hints he's just in for the glory. Maybe he knew that Homer and now Petersen would immortalize him. Incidentally, Julie Christie plays Achilles' mother, and it's a pity her role is so small. Like most men of my generation, I fell in love with Ms. Christie when I first saw her in "Doctor Zhivago"; she was a beautiful woman and a fine actress, and I'm happy to say that the years have not diminished either quality.

Hector (Eric Bana) is the story's most noble hero, but he doesn't get enough screen time even in this Director's Cut for the notion to sink in. Besides, for over two-and-a-half millennia people have known Achilles was going to kill him and drag his body around the city walls. Although it doesn't lessen our respect for him, it doesn't invest any confidence in him as a main character, either. As for Paris (Orlando Bloom) and Helen (Diane Kruger), they are typically naive young people, more infatuated with one another than in love. Bloom is a bit wimpy, and while Ms. Kruger is beautiful, I'm not sure she has a face that would have launched a thousand ships.

Of all the actors in the picture, though, I enjoyed Sean Bean best as Odysseus, the King of Ithaca. Homer says he was the cleverest and most cunning of the Greeks, and Bean has both the experience and the gravitas to play him that way. He is at once heroic, capable, and admirable. Now, as I've said, if Petersen wanted to direct "The Odyssey" and keep Bean in the starring role, I'd be all for it. Especially if he chose to keep the mythological fantasy element of "The Odyssey" intact.

All and all, there is much I liked about the Director's Cut of "Troy," enough to keep me occupied for the better part of the film, despite its extreme length. Foremost, I liked the spectacle. I don't know how the special effects showed up in a big movie theater, but they look quite realistic on the home screen. The armies, the fleets of ships, the huge walled city of Troy are all quite impressive. In fact, Troy is a lot bigger and more glamorous in the movie than the real-life city's ruins would indicate, but that's part of the exaggerated fun and spectacle of the show. I liked the battle scenes, which director Petersen handles with sweep and grandeur. They may lack the overall impact of the battles in "The Lord of the Rings," but they are exhilarating, nonetheless. I liked the fight between Hector and Achilles, and even though we know full well how it's going to end, the combat is intense. And I appreciated that the scenes of war themselves were even more realistically graphic this time out, without resorting to grossness or sensationalism for their own sake.

OK, so I could take or leave Brad Pitt in the pivotal role, and I missed the gods. But Petersen's adroit direction of the warfare, the general pomp and splendor of the imagery, and the acting of Cox, O'Toole, and Bean won me over. "Troy" is not a great film, not even in its new Director's Cut, but it is still an engrossing film, sometimes for the wrong reasons but close enough for Hollywood.

As far as the Director's Cut goes, do the additions substantially improve the story and make it a better motion picture? I don't know. It probably depends on whether or not you liked the film to begin with. If you did, you'll like the new cut even more. If you didn't like it, nothing will help. I appreciated the added material, and I didn't notice that the film was any longer. Heck, it already started out long, so what's another half an hour? It's an epic, and epics are supposed to be long. You take things for what they are.

Video:
The picture quality in standard definition was already excellent, and, not surprisingly, the HD DVD outshines it. The screen size equals the movie's 2.40:1 theatrical ratio (measuring about 2.26:1 across my television, given its small degree of overscan), and almost everything about the image is first-rate. What impresses me most about this video is the naturalness of the colors. While they can be bright and deep, with solid black levels, they are never gaudy as in so many modern motion pictures. They simply look realistic, often filmed in what appears to be natural light; yet detail is clearly visible even in the darkest scenes. The blues of the sea are especially rich, as are the sands of the plains and other earth tones. There is good definition, of course, if sometimes a trifle soft, probably a condition of the original print; there is little or no grain; and there are practically no moiré effects, rippling lines. Pitt shows some rippling muscles, true, but there's nary a distortion in sight. I love high definition.

Audio:
As on WB's previous HD DVD release of "Troy," the studio includes both Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD 5.1, and they are splendid. The frequency response is remarkably wide, from the highest treble to the deepest bass, the latter making itself eminently manifest during the opening title music. The dynamics are strong and forceful, with a sharpness of attack that is as impressive as almost any movie soundtrack you'll hear. The impression one gets from both DD+ and TrueHD 5.1 is of clean, clear sonics, certainly cleaner and clearer than in regular Dolby Digital 5.1. The front-channel stereo spread is broad, the lows are taut, and the surrounds fill the listening area 360 degrees with the noises of war, the clash of armies, and the activity of men and equipment. Yet it is done with restraint and never overpowering. The advantage I hear with TrueHD 5.1 is slightly greater smoothness and openness and a more-incisive transient response.

Note, however, that Dolby Digital Plus is the movie's default audio; if you're going to use TrueHD, remember to select it from the disc menu.

Extras:
Besides improved picture and sound, another advantage of HD DVD is that a single disc can usually embrace an entire feature film, even one as long as this Director's cut, plus have room left over for extras. Moreover, we get forty-five scene selections; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, and Korean subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

In addition, the disc contains all of the bonus items found on the second disc of the SD Special Edition. These begin with a two-and-a-half minute introduction by director Wolfgang Petersen, in HD, and a number of brief but worthwhile featurettes in standard definition. The first featurette is an eleven-part, making-of documentary, "Troy in Focus." It contains, in order, "Adapting Homer," about two minutes; "On Set With Brad Pitt," two minutes; "Casting Helen," a little over a minute; "Agamemnon," three minutes; and "From Malta to Mexico," three minutes; "Battles and Weapons," two minutes; "Hector and Ajax," one minute; "Breiseis and Achilles," two minutes; "Two Great Warriors," one minute; "A King's Request," two minutes; and "The Trojan Horse," two minutes. Fortunately, there are "Play All" features to make this stuff more manageable. Next is another multipart, behind-the-scenes sequence, the seventeen-minute "In The Thick of the Battle," that shows us how the filmmakers created some of the action sequences. After that is a fourteen-minute, six-part extra, "From Ruins to Reality," that explains how archaeologists found the ruins of ancient Troy and excavated them, and how the moviemakers fashioned their own design for the city. After that is "Troy: An Effects Odyssey," seven parts, revealing how the filmmakers created some of the movie's visual effects. Then, there is the three-part "Attacking Troy" that includes "Homer, A Story for the Ages," seven minutes; "Designing a Fighting Style," six minutes; and "Flipping the Chariot," two minutes; followed by a cute CGI bit called "Greek Ship Towing" that you won't want to miss. Finally, there is a widescreen theatrical trailer.

As always with WB's HD DVDs, the disc also includes pop-up menus, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, bookmarks, and an Elite Red HD case.

Parting Thoughts:
I'm not sure what I expected from the Director's Cut of "Troy," since I already thought the theatrical version was too long. While "Troy" turned out to be a better picture than I thought it was going to be, it was not quite the rousing swashbuckler I was hoping for nor the thrilling romance. Yet despite these disappointments and the question of so characteristically a Tinseltown star in the lead, I found myself moved by the spectacle, moved by director Petersen's forward pace, moved by the big battle scenes, and moved by several of the supporting performances. The Director's Cut gives us even more of the same. It does not change the story, nor does it reveal much about the characters we didn't already know. But in its favor, the additional moments of carnage, sex, nudity, and Sean Bean do no harm to the film.

"Troy," the Director's Cut, may not be the most awe-inspiring sword-and-sandals epic ever made, but enough of it worked in this HD DVD edition to keep me interested for the movie's three-and-a-quarter hours duration. I did not leave dissatisfied.

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