Unlike the epic TROY, which spent much time and money recreating the spectacle of the Trojan War with CGI, the emphasis here is on the political ambitions and prophecies leading up to the start of the siege of Troy. Rufus Sewell as Agamemnon gives a performance (as the man who would conquer Troy) which eerily evokes Oliver Reed at his sinister best, as he makes it clear that the romance of Helen and Paris was merely a convenient excuse for the events that followed, and that the war came out of his own thirst for conquest. Sienna Guillory is attractive as Helen, but her role is rapidly reduced to that of a bystander in the great events that swirled around her. And the film makes clear its logic about this: how could a woman be responsible for a war in a time when even princesses were chattels of the royal houses to be auctioned off in marriage for political gain? As it deals more intimately with its characters and looks more closely at social power structures and gender roles of the period, this film is much more interesting as a human drama than the rather empty spectacle TROY.
