I've been on an Ancient Greece kick lately, and Troy is a fun movie. It's not a great movie, maybe, but it is fun.

Brad Pitt is good as Achilles. He's not especially imposing in my opinion, and he's not as big as I'd imagine Achilles to be, but he looks good and acts well. Diane Kruger is incredibly beautiful as Helen of Troy, and it's easy to imagine a beauty such as her's causing a war.

Troy isn't exactly accurate to the Iliad, but it captures the broad strokes. I watched the longer director's cut version, which stretched the movie out to almost 3 hours and added in much more gore and fight scenes, and I think the longer runtime added tot he epic feel of the movie.

It's hard to find these epic period pieces these days, especially set in Ancient Greece. We may be seeing a bit of a resurgence with Christopher Nolan's Odyssey coming up this year, which I'm tentatively excited for but some of the casting has me puzzled. I think Greece and the ancient world is ripe for great storytelling, and I wish there were more movies and TV shows given the budget like Troy was to try and do it justice.