( Note: This conversation contains major spoilers.  Read at your own peril.)

WHO:	Mixed Reviewers Martin Scribbs and Gabriel Shanks
WHAT:	A meeting-of-the-minds over drinks on a rain-soaked summer night
HOW:	Diet Coke and Makers Mark bourbon
WHERE:	Robert Emmett's in Times Square, at the corner of 44th and 8th

MARTIN:  Really, it's an honor just to be nominated.

GABRIEL: We just finished seeing TROY, and although we both just participated in the Cinemarati Roundtable article about the film, there were a bunch of people talking there, and I didn't really get to hear in-depth what you thought of the film.

MARTIN: I thought that for a summer blockbuster version of The Iliad, it was probably as good as we could expect.

GABRIEL: It needs that caveat though, doesn't it?

MARTIN: It's got an all-star cast, so I'm thinking part of the time, "Hey, that's Brad Pitt," and part of the time "Hey, it's Achilles." It's kind of hard to be mythic when we've seen you in fifty movies before.

GABRIEL: He's such a contemporary actor. He really struggles with being a part of this world, whereas some of the other, more seasoned actors -- Brian Cox, Peter O'Toole -- know how to make that transition to a more mythic universe. Has Brad Pitt ever done a period piece before?

MARTIN: I do not think so. His fly-fishing movie was back in the 50's or earlier, I think. I've noticed that almost every movie he's in, Brad Pitt gets beaten unmercifully. And I think the reason for it is that men enjoy going to see Brad Pitt in a movie but, being jealous or whatever, enjoy seeing him get beat up. Spy Game? Beaten unrecognizable. I think even in Thelma and Louise he got thrown around by the Harvey Keitel character.

GABRIEL: My theory is that Brad Pitt hates being the "pretty boy." When I saw 12 Monkeys, I got the sense that this guy is an actor who's unhappy being boxed in by his looks. Which is really interesting in the context of TROY, where he's playing this golden-haired, tanned, buffed Greek superhero. It's like he's embracing the pretty boy again.

MARTIN: He's kind of a self-hating beauty character. I normally associate that with actresses, like Charlize Theron before she did Monster. Although Mel Gibson has the problem too...

GABRIEL: Well, Brad Pitt probably has -- and I'm not going to laugh while I say this -- an artist deep inside, yearning to be free.

MARTIN: Mind if I laugh while you say it?

GABRIEL: (Laughs.) All actors must want to play the widest variety of roles possible. And if you're golden-haired with cheek of tan, you're never going to play Richard III. Or Willy Loman. Back to your comment about TROY as a summer blockbuster, though. For being inspired by one of the great pieces of classic literature, it's got an astonishing Hollywood formula structure to it. To decide that the whole story is not about the sacking of Troy, or about the Trojan Horse, but about the mano-a-mano between Achilles and Hector...I mean, that's really the climax of the movie, don't you think? It's a movie about these two men going at one another. It's Cool Hand Luke, it's High Noon...

MARTIN: The Iliad as Western. Bad Day at Troy Rock.

GABRIEL. Yes! They're facing off in this way that men have always done in the movies. I don't if that really serves the audience. I mean, I don't want to be the critic who compares to the book and nitpicks. Movies should stand on their own. But they are sacrificing a lot of Homer's most interesting elements.

MARTIN: Well, getting rid of the gods [is a huge change]. There's no gods anywhere in the movie, there's no divine influence. Every character that believes in prayer or omens is an utter fool for doing so, and is given the smack-down for doing so. It completely changes the movie; it completely changes all of the characters. I mean Priam -- in the book you can understand why he's so focused on the omens, but in this he's a doddering old fool for doing so.

GABRIEL: Why do you think David Benioff (the screenwriter) took the gods out?

MARTIN: I think he was afraid of Clash of the Titans. It's hard enough to find a Helen who isn't laughable, but it's a power of magnitude to find an Aphrodite who isn't laughable. Because anyone you pick is going to look human unless you use CGI, and then you look like you're at the Harry Hamlin creature feature.

GABRIEL: We're at a place in the world right now, too, where we're having trouble believing in gods in the real world.

MARTIN: It is kind of an out, too, in The Iliad. Because you can say, "the humans aren't all that bad, because the gods are making us do this. We're playthings of the gods." And in that sense, The Iliad -- excuse me, I mean TROY -- oops, Homer hasn't consented to the name change yet...

GABRIEL: (Laughs.) He's still waiting for the Writers Guild arbitration results.

MARTIN: (Laughs.) TROY by Alan Smithee! Anyway, in that sense, TROY has a really interesting approach to the morality of war. We don't end up rooting for the Trojans, and we don't end up rooting for the Greeks; neither side is really the good side. All of the tragedy that happens is due to human error.

GABRIEL: And even though I enjoyed the movie to a degree, I have to admit feeling kind of empty at the end because there was no real moral rectitude in that regard. There was no obvious good guy or bad guy. And that's interesting in a way, but it also leaves you hanging...

MARTIN: It's not dramatic. There's no payoff. I think that's kind of a clever move and I enjoyed seeing it executed, but it's not a smart enough movie to do that. You know, it's not Brecht. They weren't really making a point.

GABRIEL: Yep. Benioff really stripped out most of the complexity and nuance in the relationships between the characters. And it goes beyond the simple stuff, like making Patroclus a "cousin" or inventing a priestess/sister/lover. It's really basic: Agamemnon bad, Achilles good. I realize for a Hollywood movie, it's a lot of characters to keep up with, over a dozen with major speaking parts. But it feels like it's the children's version of The Iliad, with the pop-ups in the middle. It's too easy to say this, but in some ways it's Iliad For Dummies. They stripped the meat out of the text.

MARTIN: Reading The Iliad, it's an interesting cultural revelation. I mean, the narrator is crazy, because the heroes, the Greeks, are really kind of bad people. They break their oaths, they're duplicitous, they win by being sneaky. There was some of that preserved, but TROY lost a lot of it. Yes, Agamemnon was a bad guy, but in The Iliad, you realize that it was what was thought of as necessary for being a good leader. I think if they want to do a sequel, they are going to run into trouble when choosing between The Odyssey or The Aeneid, because Odysseus...that's what he's all about.

GABRIEL: Odysseus is a difficult guy; that's why Poseidon punishes him, which is why we have The Odyssey at all. Whereas in this movie, Sean Bean, who plays Odysseus, is probably the nicest and smartest of the bunch. This is not the guy who'll piss Poseidon off. Another one is Briseis, who is barely in Homer's book, who they invented basically...and suddenly, she's the one who killed Agamemnon! They redeemed the world's biggest loser, Paris, by deciding that he's the one who shoots Achilles in the heel! I think it's a step away from sacrilege to do that. Paris' greatest attribute is his cowardice; it would be like making Madame Bovary decide to repent her wicked ways on the last page.

MARTIN: It's very much taking out everything that's alien and interesting about the moral landscape of The Iliad. I believe the reason that Briseis is in there is so Achilles can be nice to someone, to give him a tiny bit of heroism...he stands apart of this looting and sexual violence. He can run after his woman to save her at the end. It's completely anathema to the character, but I think it's what they felt they needed. It felt like they wanted all the characters to be on an exactly even keel -- all the good characters had some flaws, and the bad characters got some redeeming moments.

GABRIEL: There was, politely put, a wide disparity in the performance abilities of this cast. There are some people doing very good work, who leap over the narrative implausibilities, the gaping holes in the script. And then there are others who just trip and fall. Who did you like?

MARTIN: Priam. Peter O'Toole did an excellent job.

GABRIEL: He's the only one who really gave me a sense of what it meant to lose Troy. He has that soundless scene where he's just staring at Troy burn, and you realize, Wow...that's what it's about. A way of life is being destroyed.

MARTIN: It's interesting because a few months ago, I saw Lawrence of Arabia on a big screen. It's amazing. When you see it on the heroic scale that it's intended on, it's unbelievable. And the scene where Troy was burning reminded me of the scene in Lawrence where Peter O'Toole leads his army out to the desert and they absolutely slaughter the battalion. And then the photographer who had been lionizing him says, "Let me take your awful picture, you bloody awful man." That moment where O'Toole realizes the enormity of what he's done. You get the sense that the same thing is hitting Priam, realizing the enormity of the moment. So few actors can convey enormity.

GABRIEL: The other one who I think has an idea of what's at stake is Brian Cox. They've made Agamemnon into a megalomaniac empire builder, sure, but Cox really commits to that. You see a man who knows what's really happening. Cox can turn on that mustache-twirling villainous bad guy when he needs to, but you can tell that he's also acutely aware of the larger geopolitical shape of thing.

(Pause.)

GABRIEL: Is that it? Is that all of the performances that we liked?

(Martin giggles.)

GABRIEL: Well we should say that no one really embarrasses themselves.

MARTIN: Well, James Horner.

GABRIEL: The composer, yes, embarrasses himself.

MARTIN: It's one of the most obtrusive scores I've ever heard.

GABRIEL: It goes off in all the wrong places!

MARTIN: Uvulating, wailing, gnashing...it makes you think that in the ancient world, you couldn't go to battle without a 64-piece orchestra. The timpani were going non-stop.

GABRIEL: So was the wailing, vaguely Indian woman. But that's what James Horner brings into his scores to fake emotion for the filmmakers. We're going to get emails now from all those Titanic. But there were moments in Titanic that were not emotionally moving enough, so Cameron brought James Horner to provide that emotion for an unsophisticated audience. The same thing is happening here; during the sacking of TROY, there are times that the music's so loud where you can barely even concentrate. This culture is being devastated, and the orchestra's blasting away...

MARTIN: (Sings) "This is herooooic!"

GABRIEL: (Laughs, then sings) "In case you can't teeellll!"

MARTIN: (Sings) "Now this part is traaaagic!" A Greek chorus would have been more subtle.

GABRIEL: But you bring up Lawrence of Arabia. The cinematographer, Roger Pratt, seems to be very affected by David Lean in shooting this desert scene. That sense of score, wideness.

MARTIN: I love how they used the ocean as a backdrop to the Greek scenes. There was a wonderful use of color, the deep blue ocean. Originally, all of the Greek city-states were color coded: the Spartans were red, gold lilt for everything to do with Agamemnon. Then once they got to TROY, all the Trojans were dressed in tye-dye.

GABRIEL: Especially the nice Trojans. The Trojans who didn't want to fight were in ocean-blue tye-dyed saris, and then all the bad people were straight out of this medieval leather bar ethos. You half expected the Orcs to come out. It was all too Helm's Deep for me.

MARTIN: There was total fetishization. In the scene before Achilles and Hector battle, they get dressed. And normally, those movie montages are of, like, Julia Roberts trying on different clothes, having fun shopping. And instead it's...

GABRIEL: ...leather harnesses, snapping into place. Who knew Troy had a leather bar?

MARTIN: You expect someone to tell Achilles the 'safe word' before they send him out.

GABRIEL: Don't you think that Wolfgang Peterson was out to make a really sexualized, even sexy, movie? The women are always gorgeous and voluptuous and always well lit. They all look like Rita Hayworth in Gilda The Greek. And he's sexualized the boys as well. They show a lot of flesh.

MARTIN: It was definitely sexualized. The only men who didn't wear shirts were absolute hardbodies. You didn't see Brian Cox with an open midriff. But Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt were continually shirtless and undressed.

GABRIEL: I'm trying to think. In the films of Peterson that I've seen -- The Perfect Storm, Das Boot, Outbreak, In The Line of Fire, Air Force One -- this idea of bodice-ripping hasn't been a part of it. It's like Wolfgang found his penis or something. He decided it was okay to have things get a little hot, albeit in that Anne Baxter in Cleopatra way.

MARTIN: You used the term 'bodice-ripper'; that's exactly what it was. There weren't any sex scenes, but there were a lot of sexualized scenes. It was like those Harlequin novels, very much the female idea -- from what I've been told -- of what works about men.

GABRIEL: Is it just Brad Pitt we're talking about? I'm trying to think -- did Paris and Helen ever have a scene of intimacy?

MARTIN: No.

GABRIEL: So it's really Brad.

MARTIN: Well, there's a lot of semi-clothed lounging. Which I think is obligatory in classical literature. I think I, Claudius started the trend.

GABRIEL: All right: I always ask Jill, when doing these Critics Over Coffee, to sum up her reactions as a closer in one sentence. Since this is your first one, I'm going to ask you the same thing. But since it's you, you've got to be hilariously funny. I'll give you a second.

{MARTIN thinks furiously. GABRIEL waits.}

MARTIN: Okay. TROY is a Trojan Horse that contains exactly what you think it does.

GABRIEL: Ha! Exactly. I'll say that after Van Helsing, it's good that the summer of 2004 has finally started: huge, surface-deep escapism is exactly what we need. Oh! One other thing. The producers must have spent a fortune on spray-on tanning solution. Because Brad and Orlando are the exact same color throughout the entire movie. Or...hmmm....I've got it! Brad and Orlando were tanning together! Which is probably not a rumor we should be starting on the internet.

MARTIN: Probably not.