Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Steineded How sad is this?

GazerRise Fantastic!

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

whitej-74393 The Odyssey made me see my kids again after my wife got full custody. I loved the smiles my kids had when they saw the cyclops eat the man alive, it put a warm feeling in my heart. Almost better than A Talking Cat!?©2013

tankace It is the anniversary of this historic mini-series which here in Greece back in High- School our history and philosophy teachers always said to us to watch it. And truth to be told ,this time they we right, the series is at least a decent take of one of the most famous adventure stories of all time and one of the oldest to.So to finish with this part quickly yes the series has taken several liberties with the source material and yes the parts about the Trojan War are perhaps the one of the biggest strays of a source material since Braveheart, Apocalypto, Pocahontas, the Patriot and Pearl Harbor. However unlike those films it has quality story-telling, nice scenery and a respect to the adapted material ,so it is more a case of the 300 and the Last Samurai. And as I wrote we have an adapted material, so it is the take of the directing, producing and writing team of the story not the story itself for the Odyssey is a monster of a book! For that the creative team has to be faithful to the themes, major plot points and characters of the story and that mini-series actives this goal. Now the acting ,in all honesty, is passable ,with the exception of Odysseas, Penelopy and Tilemacos, who are portrait very well. Well it is the story of Odysseas and his family isn't it? I think ,is logical to get the best parts of it, though the rest of the cast do a good work ,so no real complains here.The effects are quit good event two decades after dispute the facts we are talking about a TV-budget adventure. The creatures of the myth are depicted very good and even now when I re-read the Odyssey when I want to think of the creatures, I use their incarnation from the series and the same applies for the human characters in a lesser extent.In general we have a decent adaptation of Homer's work and was presumably the best we could get back then, which in the end is "Not too bad at all". Now if it is a remake of that I have no idea, let's hope that it will be as respectful as this series.

iami-4 A 10! I mean, why not? How grateful I am (we should all be) for Classical lit to get its due in media of the current world -- film with fine attention to acting and telling and special effects. To be literate in film language is essential. That includes TV probably moreso than the movie screen because TV is pervasive. We have it in many rooms of our homes and in waiting rooms and lobbies anywhere. Odyssey (1997) was made in two parts for TV but done as though for movie theaters. A joy to experience. A credit to excellent use of special effects, that much-abused art which gets wasted when used as just so much filler and fodder. Previous to the art of digital effects (shall I call it that?), Greek and Roman mythology was unsatisfactory on film. Imagination is a great human asset, and in reading it's everything. But when the supernatural stories are attempted on screen, and audience participants expect to see something equivalent to what they've visualized while reading, the mechanics of mid-twentieth century film language was often just laughable. And, believe me, people did laugh inappropriately. Which of course gets me to the the point of a super-great story teller Odysseus/Ulysses who, essentially, lies (exaggerates to a high end) about where he has been, what he has done on the way home from war, and what happened to his band of men. This classic story is exactly that -- one of the very definitions of the term. Odyssey has it all in the way Greeks tried and succeeded in explaining the world of humankind with every bit of its individual and universal frailties and strengths. To go too far in a review would be to deny the reader and the viewer an opportunity for discovery. Just think how many have experienced this story, and all others of those times, told and read over the centuries! The total is, of course, more than the combined total of all modern best-sellers and all persons who have passed through the box offices of all theaters of every kind since "shows" were invented. The Classics are the stuff of a liberal arts education, and we have been lacking in that regard for awhile. Therefore, such films as this are another opportunity for our world to gain the insights and wisdoms of our human past. With a hope that our future will benefit as well. Add to this the excellent filmed version of Illiad, titled Troy (2004), and our opportunities are expanded. Now let's have Aenied, the Roman adventures of Aeneas. And more classic stories. About the acting in Odyssey, to say it's just fine would be inappropriately weak. The director did not accept anything but excellence, and the actors are capable of that, for sure. Armand Assante and Greta Scacchi lead an excellent cast which includes an array of experienced stars and great extras. Assante, listed at about 5-feet-9, seems smallish for the part of a great heroic age hero. But of course the real Odysseus (whoever he must have been, whether an individual or a combination of real persons) wasn't physically big. Assante fits the sizing just fine. Let me explain that four of us saw Oh Brother, Where Art Thou! in a theater, and we wanted to review this filmed Odyssey to refresh our reading memories and try to solve the subtle Coen Brothers. We four (an older couple with our son and daughter-in-law) rented Odyssey, went home and watched the first part. Next morning we did the second part. Such fun! We intended to rent the 1954 Kirk Douglas movie Ulysses, but it wasn't in the store. It is Italian-made and actually quite good but with obvious reservations by comparison. Yet, comparison is good to do with such a many-faceted tale with such themes of humankind.

funkyfry 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.