... or, Why are the Greeks all Irish? I’m sorry, but the Irish accents in this movie make it impossible for me to watch it with a straight face. I really want to say Oliver Stone has finally lost it, but I understand there’s a shaky reasoning behind the accents, and that there are some people (if few) out there who can actually ignore stuff that just plain sounds ridiculous (I mean in relation to the context, not the accents themselves, of course) in favour of creative innovation, but it just did not work for me. For an Oliver Stone film, even the look ain’t all that great. He should’ve got Robert Richardson as cinematographer again – but I guess he was busy on Kill Bill and The Aviator. The movie looks like a widescreen version of the kind of thing I’d expect to have watched in Classics and Latin classes 8 or 9 years ago. I really thought I’d at least like this movie, if not love it. Even Vangelis’ score is disppointing – but I knew this already, I’ve had it in iTunes for months and not yet come across a track even close to Chariots of Fire or 1492. What a weird day this has been for movie-watching. It doesn’t help, of course, that I still can’t see the tagline for this movie without reading it as “Fortune favours the blonde,” lol. The epic is dead, Hollywood, get it through your head.

As with The Brown Bunny, which I also watched today, I have to add an addendum and say, I fully intend to rewatch this in the near future. An Oliver Stone retrospective is long overdue, and who knows, in that context, maybe I’ll get it more. But I really think I’m being overly defensive. I just couldn’t connect to this movie at all at any point. There weren’t even any standalone images that were worthy of an “ooh!” So far, it’s the worst Oliver Stone movie I’ve seen, and I’ve seen most many times. And the worst Colin Farrell movie… and the worst Angelina Jolie movie… and the worst Val Kilmer movie… and the worst Vangelis score… heck… even relative “nobody” Rory McKann fared better in the UK sitcom “The Book Group” (when he finally speaks, incidentally, he has an anomolous Scottish sccent, and is pretty much Kenny from “The Book Group” in one of his fictional scenarios of that series, lol). Ugh, and a thousand times by Dionysis, ugh!

If anyone hadn’t noticed, I’ve spent this entire review trying desperately not to say “Utter bollocks!” “Tossycock!” and stuff like that. This paragraph’s here for the unfortunate chance that my deeper sentiments weren’t apparent. And Good Crap is it long… y’know, when I thought I might love this movie, I didn’t care that it was 3 hours, I wouldn’t care if it was 4 hours, if it was just a little good!! But I babble. I’ll shut up till the next viewing if I live to be 109. Baz Luhrman’s hopefully still working on his version of the guy’s story – in fact, he’s probably bashing away on his pre-vis stuff or whatever giggling away like a madman, “Stone, you buffoon, it’s so simple! My version will kick yours’ ass!!! Hahahahha, give me absinthe… mmm… hahahahahah!!!!”

*Aww, after writing that I looked up on the IMDb and it seems that’s Luhrman that’s the fool, the project’s page has vanished.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2005 at 2:40 am in 2 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.