'The Odyssey' review: Christopher Nolan's larger-than-life spectacle doesn't disappoint

The movies may be getting smaller, but don’t tell Christopher Nolan, whose IMAX-sized juggernaut "The Odyssey" arrives in theaters Friday.

While YouTubers are directing scrappy low-budget horror flicks like "Obsession," Nolan has gone the opposite route, marshaling a proverbial cast of thousands for his adaptation of Homer’s Ancient Greek epic. It’s DeMille-ian in scale, Kubrickian in its technical perfection and feels, at its best, like the kind of Old Hollywood production that once drew millions to the movie palaces. Boasting real longships sailing on real seas, a 35-foot Trojan horse and a two-acre replica of Troy that will be thoroughly sacked, "The Odyssey" is nothing short of awesome.

To say that Nolan’s opus is missing something — namely, a beating heart at its center — almost feels like nitpicking.

Nolan has long heard such criticisms of his idea-driven films ("Inception," "Oppenheimer") and he combats them here with some smart casting. Matt Damon brings a modern touch to King Odysseus, the shrewd strategist whose triumph at Troy is followed by years of misfortune. While his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), fends off dozens of would-be husbands (led by Robert Pattinson as the conniving Antinous), her son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), sets sail to find his lost father. Some of the supporting actors are the most memorable: Elliot Page as the young solider Sinon, Himesh Patel as the fretful sailor Eurylochus, Jon Bernthal as the crass king Menelaus and Lupita Nyong’o as an embittered Helen of Troy (she also plays Clytemnestra). John Leguizamo is a delight as the sentimental swineherd Eumaeus, the book’s most lovable character.

After a somewhat fitful start, "The Odyssey" finds its groove by channeling kitschy-classic adventures like "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad." There’s a man-eating Cyclops with a sideways eye and a man-hating Circe (Samantha Morton). Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema films the sea storms with strobe lightning and drenches the island of Calypso (Charlize Theron) in almost painful sunshine. A stroke of genius comes when Nolan answers an obvious question — what was it like inside the Trojan horse? — with a grim, grueling sequence that’ll get right into your nostrils. Finally, we get what we came for: The vengeful, one-man bloodbath that has been inspiring action heroes for millennia. (The pounding, tribal score is by Ludwig Göransson.)

The movie’s Homeric characters still feel like symbols rather than real people. But Nolan has some exegesis up his sleeve. "The Odyssey" often mentions Zeus’ law, a pre-Christian code of hospitality that might not seem terribly important. Nolan, however, finds deep meaning in it, connecting it with the Trojan War, the subliminal figure of Athena (Zendaya) and the entire woeful course of Odysseus’ life. When it all comes together in the film’s final frames, the effect is profound. Nolan’s muse, who provides him with such far-reaching ideas and the ability to put them so magnificently on a screen, has done all she can for him on "The Odyssey."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com