CLASSICAL scholars will wince. As will moviegoers who had hoped the much-hyped epic might deliver more than armour, sandals and sunshine.

This isn't a terrible film. But it could have been so much better.

Director Wolfgang Petersen -- who has made a lot more than Das Boot, although the 1981 submarine flick is still his best-known work -- seems to have sapped the story's strength.

The dialogue is often hammy and banal, the editing during Brad Pitt's combat scenes is choppy and liberties have been taken with the plot (which could never have been filmed in its original form, admittedly) which are downright insensitive.

In the space of days rather than years, Paris, the impetuous Prince of Troy (Orlando Bloom), falls in love with Helen, Queen of Sparta (Diane Kruger), and steals her away from her husband, King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). This sparks a war between Greece and Troy, the latter ruled by the ageing King Priam (Peter O'Toole).

Menelaus's greedy, power-crazed brother Agamemnon (Cox) unites the tribes of Greece to steal Helen back. The Greeks bring with them their most feared soldier, Achilles (Brad Pitt) and battle commences.

The casting is problematic. If I never see another movie with Bloom in it, it won't be too soon.

Cox camps up his performance as if he knows the film's a bit of a turkey, while the musclebound Pitt turns out a decent, if unremarkable, performance.

Screenwriter David Benioff cuts the heart and soul out of Homer's Iliad. But Titanic showed that a lot of people don't mind anachronisms and duff directorship, so it might do the business at the box office.

GRAEME NEAL