the first virtue - to see it is the best way to determine a child to read "Odissey". not surprising for an Andrei Konchalovski film. but surprising for the great way for give a so faithful adaptation of one of the great books of European culture. and a realistic Ulyses, different by the recipes of Kirk Douglas but giving the traits, vulnerabilities and virtues in the most convincing manner, in a great performance of Armand Assante. a film who impress. scene by scene. because it is real admirable work examples. and amazing science to use the special effects as tool and not as axis defines it in the splendid manner.

I was surprised the first time I saw this how much fun it was as an adventure film, and just picked it up again after about a decade's rest. It won't do any good to pretend this is anything other than Homer's "Odyssey" as condensed to emphasize action and romance. It also would be rather pointless to act like these are some of the great performances in film, or even in fantasy film. Still, the whole thing does work mostly because of the excellent location photography and Armand Assante's charismatic performance.Quite a few of the other performances suffer for whatever reason, sometimes due to bad casting. Bernadette Peters is a good actress I guess, but just totally wrong for the part of Circe. She came off like the trailer park version of Circe. Isabella Rosselini, she was just horrible in this movie. Never was her awkward way of speaking English more obtrusive, and the odd sense of humor that she seems to want to bring to Athena is out of place. However Christopher Lee has a fun scene as the blind prophet Tiresias, who Odysseus must go to the land of the dead to meet. And Michael J. Pollard, always a fine actor and very amusing, is good as the god of wind. Some of the blame is surely with the director, since Peters for example is not as good as Vanessa Williams in a similar role, and I'm pretty sure in general she's a much better actress.This is a good film to introduce kids to the story of the Odyssey. It doesn't go into some of the ideas of the book, which is sort of an exploration of the ethics of hospitality and the moral value of truth (as well as of course the moral value of lies). Special effects are well done, and the conflict with Troy is covered in a suitable way. Assante carries the whole film with his performance. He's good at conveying the pride and then the pain of Odysseus.

A decent cast and some tight writing make this a pretty good spectacle. Poor Odysseus (Armand Assante). He spends ten years fighting for the Greeks in the Trojan War, and it takes him another nine years to survive the return trip and reach his kingdom in Ithaca. He undergoes many adventures -- some good and some horrifying -- along the way, and meanwhile at home his wife Penelope (Greta Scacchi) is fending off dozens of suitors who believe Odysseus is dead and who want to take over his island and his wife.Why does Odysseus have such a tough time? Because he overreached. After he figured out how to get inside the walls of Troy (the Trojan Horse) he bragged aloud that he could do anything he wanted without the help of the gods. Poseidon (who later became the Roman Neptune) heard him and was royally browned off, so he regularly interfered with the sea voyage of Odysseus and his men. PO'ing the gods was one of three cardinal sins for the Greeks, called hubris. A second sin was pleonexis, being overly materialistic. I forget the third sin. I think it may have had to do with pronouncing "nuclear" as "nukyoolar." This version has a couple of good things going for it. In the DVD commentary, Assante says that the writers managed to trim it down to an adventure story, leaving out the philosophizing. But I don't remember much philosophizing in the original. If there's a message in Homer's tale it's that the dice of the gods are loaded. At least this version HAS gods in it, while other films built around The Iliad and The Oddysey have tended to eliminate them entirely and turn the sources into sword and sandal epics full of muscle men. Furthermore, these gods aren't remote, distant, humorless giants. They're playful, whimsical and sometimes spiteful, like the originals. Some episodes are deleted, like Odysseus' affair with the teen-age Nausicaa. And we don't get to see Odysseus recognized by his old dog, Argos, when he finally returns in disguise to Ithaca. I don't know why it was left out. Everybody likes dogs except people who like cats. The dialog is stylized but rendered in prose, which is okay. "Iambic pentameter helps you remember the lines." (I think that sentence is in iambic pentameter, if I counted correctly.) Homer just put that into the story to make it easier to remember. Rhymes and metric lines are memory pegs. ("Thirty days hath September....") Like "The Iliad", "The Odyssey" was an oral tradition, to be recited from memory before an audience. If you left out "wine-dark" before sea, you knew you'd messed up something in your recitation. The photography and location shooting are achingly gorgeous.The cast is full of well-known names, some of whom do better than others. Assante is a believable Odysseus. He's given some time to mourn the loss of his men, as is proper, and is allowed to weep convincingly. Of the rest, most are pretty good. Except, I must say that Vanessa Williams, a real stunner, is poorly wardrobed (when she's wearing anything) and sounds like an amateur actress compared to the others. Eric Roberts is Eurymachus, the chief suitor, and adds some touches to the role as a real scuzzbag.The special effects beat those in any other version that I'm aware of. Scylla, the multiple-headed monster who snatches men off ships and eats them, is truly spooky, looking like a highly sentient and directional Venus fly trap. Ugh. The cyclops is no better. He traps the Greeks in his cave and after eating one or two, he gets drunk until, as Homer put it in one translation, he falls asleep "dribbling liquor and bits of men." The "no-man" ruse is retained.You know something? This is a pretty good story for a whole family. The kids will learn something about ancient Greece and they'll be entertained by the (considerable) violence. A generation ago, there was a great push to discard the works of "dead, white European males" from high school and college curricula in favor of multi-culturalism. By "multi-culturalism" I didn't get the impression that anyone wanted to read the Baghavad Gita or the Analects of Confucius, just mostly contemporary works critical of Euroamerican culture. But here's a literary icon of that culture -- and it couldn't be more "other" if it tried.

I should've been doing a number of other things when this two part television special aired many years ago. But the scope and authenticity of the production had me hooked. As with all translations of literature to the screen (big and small) there is some reworking of the root tale, and Hallmark Entertainment's offering of "The Odyssey" is no different.But, if you can ignore the truncation of the prequel "The Illiad", and the truncation of characters (Patrokles comes to mind), then you, as an English speaking audience member, should be able to enjoy this very lavish and very wide of scope television production.This is not a Greek fantasy epic of old Hollywood, where sets, costumes and social undercurrents of Greek society are cleansed for a general middle American audience. No. This production shows the Greek tale as it might have been imagined during the time it was originally told. The dirt floors of primitive dwellings, the simple skins, armor and weapons used, along with some of the musical and other artistic endeavors of the time. Classic Greek mythology is presented within an authentic Classic Greek setting.The tale tells mostly the events from the epic poem, but also gives a more down to Earth and contemporary spin by presenting the test the ancient Greek gods put forth to both King Odesseus and Queen Penelope. Admittedly because of the masculine nature of the classic tale, husband and wife are given different focuses, but both are driven to and beyond the point of temptation while still maintaining their deep love for one another.I have no real complaints about this film. Some of it was shot on Betacam and transferred to 35mm (possibly a high grade 16mm), and it shows in some of the shots. But scope of the film makes up for a minor technical quibble.A fairly good watch, and unexpected production value from a made for TV movie. The DVD could've been more complete with subtitles, and perhaps a music only audio track or commentary. But as it stands now it's enough to have this minor gem preserved on optical media.Enjoy :-)