Big! Spectacular! Overpowering! Loud! It’s all that and more. Mostly, though, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (that’s how I’ll always think of it) is about humans warring with other humans, fighting off monsters, or battling the elements. At its best—when it’s not big, spectacular, overpowering, and loud—it’s just about humans, with some royal succession drama thrown in.
My un-director’s cut would take the first 30 or so minutes to establish what the story is about, edit the intervening 90 minutes to a montage of action highlights, and resume with Odysseus on Calypso’s island. After he comes to, from seven years on Calypso's lotus flower diet, he returns to Ithaca and cleans up the palace. I’d also edit the battle with the suitors, which goes on much too long and is nearly impossible to follow, and cut the remembered sack of Troy, which also goes on too long. They’d be fine as "deleted scenes" on the 4K UHD.
All the actors do great work, and thank goodness for IMDB so we can find out who they were, because the credits go by too quickly to read. To highlight just three I didn’t recognize, John Leguizamo was Eumæus, the loyal servant and teacher of Telemachus (Tom Holland); Bill Irwin was the cyclops, CGI-enhanced, presumably; and Samantha Morton was Circe.
One-half star is subtracted for excessive length, and another half-star for extreme violence, though there is surprisingly little blood and gore for all the stabbings, knifings, sword thrusts, arrow hits, and eating of crew members by Polyphemus the Cyclops. Final rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
NOTE: Watching this on a television is seeing at most one-quarter of the movie. My advice is, don't even bother. See it in a theater or skip it.
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