Movie Reviews

 

ODYSSEY : MOVIE REVIEW 

RATING : 2.5 STARS / 5 (ABOVE AVERAGE)

WRITER, DIRECTOR : CHRISTOPHER NOLAN 

BASED ON HOMER'S 'ODYSSEY'

CAST : ANNE HATHAWAY, LUPITA NYONG'O, 

MATT DAMON, TOM HOLLAND, ROBERT PATTISON 

JULY 2026, ENGLISH 

 

 

Christopher Nolan's $250 million "Odyssey" suffers from lackluster direction, unimaginative story-telling, and a poor editing plan. It pales in comparison to 'Troy' (2004).The legend of a Greek hero who takes forever to return home after a war, had immense potential for fantasy larks, but even a strong finale may not be enough to salvage this buffeted boat. Many other reviewers have felt the same, the movie may well cross $100 million in the first weekend but find it difficult to have strong legs, and the first weekend audience in the Auckland theatre was to capacity but there was little evidence of them being roused by this monumentally funded and resourced lurcher. 

 

Pic is based on Homer's 'Odyssey' written many centuries before Christ. Odysseus (Matt Damon) is a Greek hero who is king of Ithaca and travels to Troy to take part in a great battle there. His Greek side wins after a ten year slog. But he and his band of men find it extremely difficult to return home. Marauding giants, nightmarish monsters, witches, sensuous but treacherous sirens all waylay them. Meanwhile in Ithaca his queen Penelope (Anne Hathway) faithfully awaits his return, even as the court has been taken over by barbarian feasting and drinking power players itching to take down the queen and usurp authority. Chief among them is Antinous (Robert Pattison) whose effeminate good looks belie cool malevolence. Odysseus and Penelope's brave son Telemachus (Tom Holland) sets out to find his father. But Penelope might well cave in to Antinous, having steadfastly waited decades for her absent husband. 

 

Two-thirds of the movie is hamstrung by uninspired direction, further done in by overbearing background music in key scenes, and rapid scene-cutting especially in the first thirty minutes which affects viewer involvement. The mystical and enchanting material is already there in this ancient epic - Nolan now needs to direct it with vision and grandeur which he is not able to do. 

 

The sequence involving the one-eyed giant Polyphemus who chomps men alive, starts off thrillingly but that overall fight has mediocre action planning, along with an abrupt ending. Another sequence where giant helmeted warriors slaughter them has overboiled background music which could just have been switched off to let the carnage play out with more gravitas. The scene with the witch is the first one where the terror is actually allowed to creep forth. 

 

Pic lacks sensuality, a pity for a film with an ample lay-out of sensuous sirens in-built in the script. Sensuality has never been Nolan's strength. Odysseus is supposed to spend years under the enchanted spell of the nymph Calypso and yet this opportunity for great sex appeal is frittered away in dreamy talk and no steam.

 

Simple linear story-telling is anathema to Nolan - he announced this loud and clear with his big bang 'Memento' (2000) - but that was for a film that hinged on disturbed memory and disjointed putting together of pieces - sheer genius in both material and execution. In Odyssey, the sense of long linear flow, which would have been so crucial to the psychological journey of this epic, is chopped up with Nolan's trademark inter-cutting between Odysseus' long journey, his conversation with the nymph Calypso and other tracks. The result is that the epic flow of the Odyssey lies cut up on the editing room floor around editor Jennifer Lame's feet. As a counter example, let me offer up not an 'ancient' epic but Zemeckis' humbling 'Cast Away' - a modern story of a man stuck at sea, separated from his waiting lady for years. It has terrific long linear flow - the pre-crash life, the marooning on the island and the wonderful shenanigans therein, the wrenching return to civilization and the scene with his lady which I cannot bear to see. If 'Cast Away' had been similarly inter-cut and chopped up, it would certainly have been cast away. 

 

Sometimes, existing mythical material is taken up by enterprising screenwriters who take it to the next level - the director, then inspired by this high-wire act, feels bolstered to give it his creative best. That just can't happen in 'Odyssey' - Nolan himself has grabbed hold of the adapted screenplay and no one else, the final treatment is fairly anemic, and ultimately the direction is weighed down by the tepid screenplay. 

 

But not for nothing is Chris Nolan one of Hollywood's most successful directors - he finds his spur and clicks it in the last act. There is a genuinely moving talk between incognito hero and heroine, and then a reprise of the famous 'stringing the bow' sequence (cf. 'Ramayana') followed by a crackerjack sustained fight where Odysseus mows down an infinity of attackers (this is the strength you find when the prize is Anne Hathaway). Even music composer Ludwig Goransson, who can't plug his loud band in the movie heretofore, is roused to excellence in this climactic fight with a continuous boom-beat that pulsates to the last sword-stab. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema's work, which has made a killing in Hollywood, bears no special mention here. 

 

All the brouhaha over black actress Lupita Nyong'o's casting as Helen of Troy comes to little in the picture as she is given not much to do - just some tokenism by Nolan. Other non-white actors Corey Hawkins (playing Polybus) and Himesh Patel (Eurylochus) are given personas of little distinction.