The first minute of Helen of Troy could be used as a case study for budding filmmakers on "how to hook the audience." The narrator deftly evokes the key elements of the legend of the fall of Troy: the beautiful Helen, whose face launched a thousand ships; Paris, who loved her; the mighty warriors Agamemnon and Achilles, the battle at the golden walls of Troy. We're given a tantalizing glimpse of these events and figures... and then the narrator tells us "But that's not the way it happened. Let me tell you the real story..." The film begins in earnest, and we are spellbound.

Helen of Troy is truly epic in scope, taking on an ambitious story that sweeps across various Mediterranean locations, from Troy to Sparta, involves three royal families and their personal intrigues, has passions raging high in both love and hate, and culminates in a series of ambitious battle sequences. It brings to life some of the most famous quasi-historical, quasi-mythical characters of all time, and certainly some of the most famous from Greek legend: even if you aren't familiar with the story told in Homer's Iliad, the names of Achilles, Agamemnon, and Helen should at least ring a bell.

It's certainly a challenging assignment... and Helen of Troy pulls it off with style. Dynamic, well-paced, and engrossing, this is one epic film that gets things right. I watched the film completely glued to my seat, not even noticing the passing of time, which is no mean feat for a three-hour production.

The story of Helen of Troy is a blend of the historical and the mythical: although we have a single, famous retelling of the story in the Iliad, the events and characters here have about as much basis in historical fact as the legend of King Arthur... that is to say, only a little. It's only since the turn of the 20th century that we know for a fact that the city of Troy really existed. With its story of the ten-year siege of Troy by the forces of Agamemnon, Homer's Iliad has the ring of historical fact about it, but in truth we know very little about what may have been based in fact, what may have been changed in the telling before Homer created his epic poem, and how much is pure Homeric invention.

With this in mind, the film has quite a bit of freedom in interpreting its legendary source material, and it uses it to good effect. Helen of Troy takes a fairly naturalistic approach to the material, developing the characters and the situation in such a way that the epic events of the story are entirely believable.

I was very impressed with the ensemble cast, who do a great job of bringing their characters to life in a believable and powerful manner, as well as with the script that makes it all work. Agamemnon (Rufus Sewell) stands out as one of the most memorable characters here: despite his overpowering ambition, his thirst for power, and his callous disregard for others, he's far from a one-sided villain. Like the other characters who populate Helen of Troy, he's fully comprehensible as a human being; except for cultural differences in how he behaves, he could be a high-powered New York lawyer as easily as an ancient Greek warlord. But singling out Agamemnon as one of the most memorable and well-rounded characters shouldn't suggest that the others are less so: Menelaus (James Callis), Cassandra (Emilia Fox), King Priam (John Rhys-Davies), and even more secondary characters such as Hector (Daniel Lapaine) and Achilles (Joe Montana) are all excellent. Ironically, the weakest members of the cast are the romantic leads, Helen (Selena Guillory) and Paris (Matthew Marsden). Helen is best in her scenes as a younger woman, in which she does a nice job of portraying the rather wild, self-willed girl, but her later scenes just don't have as much power as they could have. Paris is somewhat better, but still doesn't quite seem at home in his role the way the other members of the cast do.

Again in line with the naturalistic approach, the supernatural effects that play a key role in the story as told in the Iliad are kept to a bare minimum here; in fact, one thing that I found quite intriguing is that the filmmakers have cleverly made it possible to interpret the story of Helen of Troy as taking place entirely without "divine intervention." I won't spoil any of the events of the film by naming specific instances, but several of the events that are clearly interpreted by the characters as being of supernatural origin can be seen in a different light by the viewer.

Production values are absolutely top-notch throughout the film. In addition to the stunning locations, every inch of the sets looks authentic, from the crowded marketplaces to the walls of Troy. The sets and costumes capture just the right mix of luxury and splendor (Troy in particular was the richest, most cosmopolitan city of its day) with barbarism and brutality. In this setting, it's entirely believable that a prince like Hector would fight in his family's own royal games, for instance: this is a culture in which the right to rule still closely, if unconsciously, depends on public display of physical strength as well as wisdom and courage.

I was particularly pleased to notice the film's attention to getting the details right: for instance, you'll notice that the architecture of Troy is painted in colorful shades of red, green, pink, blue, and so on. Garish? You bet. Historically accurate? Absolutely. What we think of as the "classical" style of austere white marble sculpture and buildings is actually just the result of centuries of wind and rain washing off the bright paint that the Greeks used in copious amounts. Archaeologists' discovery of the "real" classical look is fairly recent, so the authentic look of Helen of Troy indicates that the production designers really did their homework.

I've been liberal with my praise of Helen of Troy, and rightfully so, but the film isn't quite perfect. A few bumps appear in the plot, such as the early interlude with Theseus (Stellan Skarsgård) and the kidnapping of Helen, which is never really explained properly, and as I mentioned earlier, the performances of Helen and Paris aren't as good as those of the rest of the cast. A few other areas, such as Achilles' legendary invulnerability, could have been developed more. These are quite minor elements in an otherwise excellent production, however. In its three hours of running time, Helen of Troy has quite a lot to do and quite a few characters to keep in play, but it all works out nicely. The characters are introduced very well, so that despite the large number of names that we hear throughout the story, it's easy to keep track of who's who, and how they're related to each other. And the film certainly achieves its effect: it's a highly entertaining, visually impressive spectacle that's one of the best epic films I've seen in a long while.

The DVD

Helen of Troy is a two-disc set, packaged in an attractive single-wide keepcase with both DVDs securely held in their own plastic spindles.

Video

Helen of Troy is presented in a visually stunning anamorphic widescreen transfer (1.85:1 aspect ratio). Colors are superb throughout the entire program, with bright colors looking strong and vivid, and softer colors like earth and skin tones looking natural; as a whole, it has a lush appearance that meshes perfectly with the gorgeous cinematography. Contrast is likewise handled extremely well, with both bright, sunlit scenes and firelit battle scenes looking equally correct. Black levels are appropriately dark, and dimly lit scenes have plenty of shading and detail.

The only flaws in this otherwise near-perfect transfer are a faint hint of grain, noticeable only in very challenging shots such as the pure blue sky, and some mild edge enhancement that detracts very little from the image.

While the overall image quality is exceptional, it's interesting to note that it's not quite uniform in quality. Helen of Troy is split into two equal halves, one on each DVD (a very good move in terms of allowing for a less compressed image), but they're actually only identical in running time, not image quality. The first disc is a single-sided, dual layer disc, and the film uses almost every bit of space (7.1 GB out of 7.95). The resulting average bit rate is an impressive 10.4 Mb/s. The second disc, however, is a single-sided, single layer disc, and while the film again almost maxes out its space, with only one layer that's only 4.36 GB (out of 4.38). The average bit rate for the second half of the film, then, is only 8.7 Mb/s: still very good, but not as stunning as the first half... and it is noticeable that the image in the second half of the film is not quite as sharp as in the first half. It's too bad that we don't get "near perfection" throughout the whole transfer, but even so, Helen of Troy still looks spectacular overall and definitely deserves its four and a half stars for video.

Audio

Helen of Troy has a spectacular soundtrack to back up its stunning visuals: with a DTS 5.1 and a Dolby 5.1 track to choose from, you can't go wrong here. The DTS track is fantastic, with a rich, full sound and powerful surround effects; in battle, you'll think there are arrows flying all around you as well as on the screen. The dialogue is consistently clear and natural-sounding, and it's always well balanced with the music and sound effects. The soundtrack packs quite a punch in the action scenes, so if you like your neighbors, you might not want to finish watching it at 2 AM, but it's nice to note that even when the sound is fairly loud, it remains clear and natural.

Spanish and French subtitles, and English closed captions, are also provided.

Extras

Helen of Troy nearly maxes out its two DVDs on the image and sound alone, leaving very little space for special features; given the outstanding video and audio quality here, that's fine by me.

Disc 1 opens with two trailers, unfortunately non-skippable, for the miniseries Traffic and Steven Spielberg's Taken. In the bonus section, there are also trailers for Monk, Law and Order, and The Hitcher III. The main special feature is a twenty-minute promotional-style "making of" featurette; while it does provide a few snippets of interesting behind-the-scenes material, it's mainly lightweight fluff.

Final thoughts

It's films like Helen of Troy that vindicate my love of lavish historical epics. Don't let the fact that this was originally made for television fool you: this is feature-film quality in every way, and in fact I found Helen of Troy to be quite a bit better all around than Gladiator, another historical epic in similar style that I also enjoyed. With an amazing widescreen anamorphic video transfer, and DTS sound, Helen of Troy is highly recommended as a purchase.