Troy

A war film set in the ancient world. During peace talks Paris takes Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta, onto his ship. Menelaus goes to his brother. Agamemnon has already gathered the Greek cities under himself and wants Troy's position; the reason is not a wife but a strait. A thousand ships set out. Achilles is among them. He does not fight for a king, he fights for his own name, and takes no orders. From there the film is a siege. A landing on a beach, a raid on a temple, a duel before the walls, and a horse. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but fame: all Achilles cares about is that his name remains, and the film says so at every opportunity. Hector is the moral centre. He does not want the war, does not approve of what his brother did, and defends the city anyway. Priam going to Achilles's tent at night is the best scene in the film, and there is no fighting in it. There are large changes in the adaptation. The gods are removed entirely, the war is reduced from ten years to a few weeks, and the fate of some characters does not match the text. It was shot in Malta and Mexico; the beach camp was built at full scale. The lead injured his Achilles tendon during filming and the production was delayed; given the character he was playing, it became the most talked-about coincidence of the period. Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Peter O'Toole, Brian Cox and Sean Bean are in the cast. Wolfgang Petersen directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes large-scale historical war films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the epic; the film alters the text freely and leaves the mythology out entirely.