|
Story by: Jack Foley
TROY, the big-budget epic starring Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and
Eric Bana, looks set to have its first public screening at this
year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Wolfgang Petersen’s film is due to be shown on May 13, the
second day of the festival, before its UK release on May 21.
Inspired by the tale famously told in Homer's 'The Iliad', Troy
is being billed as an epic tale of love and vengeance, which begins
when Paris prince of Troy (Bloom) steals Helen (Diane Kruger)
away from her husband, King Mendelas (Brendan Gleeson), thereby
starting a ten-year war.
In the ensuing conflict, Mendalas's brother, Agamemnon (Brian
Cox), launches an attack to steal Helen back, which is led by
seemingly invincible warrior, Achilles (Brad Pitt).
|
 |
As with every tragedy, however, things are complicated still
further by the fact that Agamemnon's quest is motivated by greed
rather than honour.
The film follows hot-on-the-heels of epics such as Gladiator,
the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Last Samurai, in marking
a return to old-fashioned, lavishly filmed stories of love, honour
and big screen warfare.
As well as the central trio, and aforementioned cast members,
the film also stars Sean Bean, Peter O’Toole and Saffron
Burrows.
News of its Cannes debut was featured in US industry paper, Variety,
and heightens interest ahead of the showpiece event, which will
be opened, on May 12, by Pedro Almodóvar's Bad
Education.
It will close on May 22 with a screening of De-Lovely, Irwin
Winkler's biopic of Cole Porter, starring Kevin Kline.
Th 57th annual festival is also notable, this year, for having
Quentin Tarantino as jury president - although rumours that Kill
Bill: Volume 2 would open proceedings have long since been
proved false.
In other related Troy news, a second full trailer has now been
released, which is widely considered to be even better than its
predecessor.
It begins with a voice-over from Julie Christie's Thetis (Achilles'
mum), and is available from many of the specialist film websites.
|
