Starring: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, and every other actor in Hollywood Written and Directed by: Christopher Nolan
To be present and conscious at a moment in time when a director transcends the medium is a special thing. Name brands like Scorsese, Spielberg, Cameron, and Tarantino don’t come along every day. Even more rare is the director who continually keeps leveling up.
Christopher Nolan—who broke through with the 2000 indie Memento, took the superhero movie to unprecedented heights with 2008’s The Dark Knight, and went nuclear with 2023’s Oppenheimer (a three-hour biopic about a physicist that earned almost $1 billion worldwide and took home Best Picture and Best Director Oscars)—has gone full-on supernova with The Odyssey. This guy is now on a tier all his own and even Zeus should be impressed.
That’s not to say The Odyssey is a flawless movie—or even a great movie—but it is a movie you should run out and see. It’s cinematic craft of the highest order delivered by an elite craftsman at the top of his game. This movie feels immediate, essential, and made for the big screen.
Now about those flaws… There is some fat on the bone in this three-hour epic. The first part is a little slow to get going and the last act takes its time setting up the finale. We’re introduced to many characters (played by a lot of big names), but we get to know very few of them. That makes the movie sometimes feel like Hollywood dress up (who will pop up next in Greek garb with a name like Menelaus, Calypso, or Agamemnon?).
To that end, Samantha Morton gives far and away the best performance in my favorite sequence in the film (which might feature the most squirm-inducing movie transformation since An American Werewolf in London). Her demeanor and way with the dialogue really bring this character to life. She’s probably one of the few faces in the cast a lot of people won’t know and she smashes it out of the park.
Matt Damon also does a fine job carrying the heaviest weight of the movie. He’s well suited to be king, warrior, journeyman, and lost wonderer. While he’s saddled with a few bits of clunky dialogue, he also has several great moments of Matt Damon delivery—like when he finds his shipmates doing the one thing he warned them not to do.
But for all the star power on screen this is ultimately Nolan’s movie. And he delivers without ever making the mistake of trying to overdeliver. Yes, there are a number of showstopping sequences in this movie—including one in a cave, the pillaging of Troy, and an almost John Wick-style extended fight scene—but they always feels like they’re part of a larger, connected whole.
And while this movie is undoubtedly filled with CGI, it’s to Nolan’s credit you never feel it. His commitment to making something so grand largely through practical filmmaking really pays off on screen. You feel like the characters are in actual places—on islands, in caves, in boats—which grounds the movie in a critical way. In fact, looking back on his entire filmography, one of Nolan’s greatest skills is making the fantastical seem down to earth, which he really does effectively here.
The Odyssey is not a perfect movie by any means—it could be tighter and I don’t really know how invested I was in most of the key characters—but it sure as hell entertains. You can’t ask for much more than that in a summer movie (or any movie really).