Achilles' heel
Don't hate Troy because Brad Pitt is beautiful.

By Dennis Harvey

BRAD PITT DEFINITIVELY illustrates one prominent way in which life isn't fair: he's a big, honking movie star on looks alone.

What else explains it? Two-thirds of any undergrad drama department likely harbors as much talent as he's demonstrated so far. It's not that he's a bad actor really stretched thin at times (especially on anything involving accents). He's sorta adequate when the vehicle simply requires a brand-name driver, and occasionally just right in smaller doses (Thelma and Louise, True Romance). Pitt was Oscar-nominated for his one genuinely dire performance (the gonzo act in 12 Monkeys that was amusing for five minutes and excruciating thereafter), but "not bad" is about as good as it gets. Even Tom Cruise, perennially popular frat president to Pitt's hot male model (though it's the latter who can actually claim Sigma Chi membership), has accrued more character with age. If you're not sun-blinded by his rather blank charisma, you can only shrug at the Pitt phenom. Why be a hater? God knows Hollywood has never been a meritocracy. And popular taste tilts toward candy, not bran muffins.

The first full generation of studio-groomed pretty boys to invite similar derision coincided with the heyday of elephantine costume epics. Thus it's apt that Pitt now goes where Tab Hunter, Tony Curtis, and Troy Donahue went before him: deep into togaland. Many will argue that the new Troy is held back from greatness by Brad and his famous abs, or the Brabs as they like to be called. This isn't true: Troy wouldn't be a great movie anyway, no more than The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, or even Spartacus was.

And there are a lot of good reasons to appreciate Troy. Most of them are for what it manages not to be: too corny, overblown, ponderous, laughable, or garish, for starters. The score, by James Horner, doesn't underline everything and then some. (During Troy's climactic sacking, its volume is actually turned down for emphasis!) CGI effects are used mostly to heighten real-world ones, creating a rare modern blockbuster that doesn't feel like Space Mountain on endless loop. David Benioff's cogent script ("inspired by Homer's The Iliad" – well, who isn't?) trips on relatively few dialogue howlers. The heavy machinery of spectacle and actual plot (as opposed to those spindly legs top-heavy Gladiator and Braveheart stood on: you killed my woman, now I kill you) move their impressive bulk around without too many gears squeaking. Three hours pass like two.

Producers and artisans (DeMille, Wyler, etc.) rather than artists piloted the antiquity epic's original vogue. In that solid tradition, 63-year-old multinationalist Wolfgang Petersen – a man who's never wavered, or embarrassed himself, jumping willy-nilly from Das Boot to Neverending Story to Air Force One – rises to the occasion with slightly impersonal but very accomplished craftsmanship. There are no dull moments and a few bull's-eye ones: The one-on-one combat set pieces between Paris (Orlando Bloom) and Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), then Hector (Eric Bana) and Achilles (Pitt); the unexpected poetry of flaming artillery like comets and shooting stars against a night sky; a superb moment of baby wrangling or sheer luck when Hector leaves his wife and son for the last time.

If nothing more conspicuous comes along, Troy might get the Oscar, which wouldn't be so terrible. Peter O'Toole will probably get the Supporting gold to reward his Lifetime Achievement cheekiness last year – and because he doesn't act like a nut with the D.T.s for once. He does lend real iconic value to a sprawling canvas that could use more; fellow swinging London survivor Julie Christie aside (one blah scene), the cast here is competent but unexciting. Bana is almost seasoned enough for the weight Hector carries; Bloom's Paris comes off too much as the Puppy Prince. Love interests Diane Kruger, Saffron Burrows, and Rose Byrne are nondescript. Sean Bean, Brian Cox, Nigel Terry, and the like convey proper authority. Nobody comes off cardboard, though you might wish Petersen and co. had thrown good taste to the wind for just one or two oversize character notes. Good lord, everyone's so tactfully drawn here that even Helen (Kruger) has hardly left Sparta before she repents ever causing such fuss.

Then there's Stark Raving Brad (baby does indeed show back in two scenes here, as well as front right down to that waxing line), the necessary evil that insures against a $200 million or whatever possible write-off.

What can one say? He's trying hard, voice pushed low, chiseled forehead lined from the warrior's woe of doling out life and death. Yet even bulked up for the role, he remains lightweight. Those shoulder-length goldilocks make him look like Fabio Jr.; where other actors speak the Queen's English (the universal language of movie antiquity), his mid-Atlantic stab drifts eastward.

Achilles' being the greatest of warriors here means not that he's a great tactician, rather that he can kill five guys at a time while somehow shimmying clear of a spear downpour. That's OK, the stunt work and staging pull it off – but can we believe these huge sulking lips might lead 50,000 armed Grecians? To the gym, maybe. The trouble with Pitt is that you can dress him any way, put him anywhere you like, and he's still going to be a grown-up version of a little boy who rode his brand-new Schwinn with training wheels down the driveway of a suburban home's two-car garage. There's no "edge," no vanishing into character, no magic. Save, of course, the magical bottom-line truth that magnetizes attention like a giant wooden horse: This is all it takes.

No wonder everyone wants to be an American Idol – some people out there just make it look too easy. 'Troy' opens Fri/14 in Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.