Late to The Odyssey? It’s Still Worth the Trip

The Odyssey Is Still Worth Catching on the Big Screen

The Brink of War | ★★★★☆ 4 out of 5 stars
A Highline Journal Exclusive Movie Review by Daniel Magill

 Reviewing The Odyssey is a little daunting. The story is 2500 years old, and us little humans in 2026 are going to sit here and review Homer? 

 Be that as it may, this is Christopher Nolan’s movie, and audiences are breaking records to see this film. It’s the biggest movie of his career in terms of  box office revenue. And though I’m a little late to the party since this review column just started and the movie has been out for over a month, here’s the final word. 

 First off, Nolan is nothing if not ambitious. His film choices in recent years have ratcheted up in aspiration and scale. Ever since Interstellar, he has taken on galactic, global, and large-scale historical events and epics. There is no other filmmaker quite like him. 

 I haven’t read The Odyssey, so I have no idea what his film version changed or had to leave out in order to fit the story into a movie-length narrative. And as you’ll come to know about me – I don’t care. If a movie works on its own, then it works. Movies and books are not the same.

 The structure of Nolan’s film works very well. We enter not with Odysseus (Matt Damon), but with his son (Tom Holland) and his wife (Anne Hathaway) who haven’t seen him for twenty years since he left to fight against Troy. Is he alive? Is he dead? No one knows. All they know is he won the war and then disappeared. This mystery is an effective way to get you invested in the story.

 The story of his son – yearning for his father but also having to protect himself against a horde of men pining to take the throne– is one of the strongest aspects of the story. He’s in a very difficult place, politically and socially. But what he really wants is to see his father. So off he goes, trying to learn whatever he can from people who fought alongside him.

 We then meet Odysseus himself, who appears to trapped on some deserted beach, with no memory of how long he’s been there, and with a woman (Charlize Theron) who has cared for him for many years.

 As he finally starts to remember, he recounts the tale of what happened after the war. This is his odyssey, his journey into the unknown, and the harrowing terrors and nightmares he and his crew encountered. 

 And it is harrowing. There are giants, terrifying armies, deceptive evil powers, monsters, and more. Some freaky moments that seem all too real. His crew gets smaller each time they barely escape. 

 The film effectively weaves in the Greek gods and how the people at that time would have interpreted events assuming those gods existed and had real power. Odysseus defies the gods in numerous ways, and he pays for it – as does his crew. 

 All of this works very well. It’s a compelling story, and you leave understanding why it’s endured for thousands of years. The final resolution when Odysseus finally makes it back home is very satisfying. Justice gets served. This is not a story without an ending. 

 All that said, Nolan’s film has a few weaknesses. 

 There were a couple odd casting choices that didn’t quite work. Zendaya, for one, didn’t make much of an impression as Athena, who visits Odysseus now and then. But it’s a huge cast, and fun to see so many big names in one movie, even if their appearances are sometimes brief.

 Damon excels as Odysseus – he captures the wonder and terror of what he’s seeing, the yearning to survive, protect his crew, and make it home. You can feel his despair from all he has lost. Hathaway is outstanding as his wife, who spends most of the story wondering if she’s a widow, but hoping against everything that he is still alive.

 The production value is – as with all Nolan films – off the scale, though I did find the score a little underwhelming, which surprised me because the music in most Nolan films is usually both original and captivating. 

 The film also suffers from something other Nolan films get criticized for – it seems to lack genuine heart and emotion for long stretches. It’s hard to pinpoint it, but The Odyssey is missing something. 

 That said, the story of Odysseus’ son packs the biggest emotional punch, and the resolution and increasing desperation of his shrinking crew keeps you riveted as the story progresses.

 The Odyssey is a movie you will not easily forget. It’s an epic – something we don’t see too often anymore from Hollywood. And Nolan’s version delivers. It blends human frailty with greatness, leadership, and justice, and layers in the Greek worldview regarding how they believed their gods interacted with humans. 

 It’s worth a watch.

Daniel Magill is the published author of the Readers Favorite 5-star sci-fi time travel thriller Future In Doubt and the galactic War Virus series. He lives in Burien with his wife and kids.