Movie Review: The Odyssey

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent big screen epic. 

Christopher Nolan has always been a filmmaker who has not been afraid to take chances. However, adapting The Odyssey may be one of his riskiest ventures yet. Still the result paid off with flying colors. While this may not be a fully faithful adaptation, it manages to capture the story's epic scale. This movie feels larger than life. It looks like an old school Hollywood epic in all the best ways possible. It is rare to find a modern movie that truly has this larger than life feel and that is exactly what this film does. That Nolan relies heavily on practical effects of course plays no small role in this. This alone would be reason enough to recommend it. Yet there is still much more to recommend here. The action scenes are excellent, and the best Nolan has done since Dunkirk. There is a strong emotion center here. The scene in Hades as a scene towards the end of the picture hit all the right emotional marks. What surprised me though is how well the horror scenes worked. I did not expect this movie to dip as far into the horror genre as it did and here Nolan proves himself to be an excellent horror filmmaker. The Cerci scene made me feel incredibly uncomfortable in a way that even some real horror films never have.

The casting is often excellent but sometimes misses the mark. Matt Damon is perfect as the lead, making this character feel larger than life and yet still human at the same time. Elliott Paige is fantastic in a smaller but important role. He is very much responsible for the film's most emotionally impactful moments. Anne Hathaway is great as the queen, and you forget you are watching a well-known actress. Samantha Norton is terrifying as Cerci. However, Tom Holland and Robert Patterson seem out of place here, like their characters don't belong in a period epic but instead in a modern-day story. There is nothing wrong Zendaya's performance. However, she is too recognizable as Zendaya, and the script gives her too little to actually do. Since most of the time when she is on screen, there is no opportunity for her to stretch her acting muscles, we are always aware we are looking at Zendaya instead of seeing the character. 

With so many characters, there is little time to flesh many of them out. This can make some characters feel more like plot devices than actually people (especially Robert Patterson's bully). The movie can also feature bits of clumsy dialogue that are disappointing in an adaption of a classic work of literature.  

This may not be perfect. However, it is a great movie going experience, especially if seen on a big IMAX screen.