"The Odyssey" - The OG.

Did you know Homer's The Odyssey was originally written as twenty-four books? Maybe you had to read The Odyssey in a class back in school and that factoid just dusted some cobwebs off a decades-old memory. So, you can honestly answer yes, you did know that. But I'm betting you didn't read the whole thing, did you? It's written in a style called dactylic hexameter. If that's even half as obnoxious as iambic pentameter, you probably just vomited in your mouth a little bit when recalling trying to read something in dactylic hexameter. The good news is Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey has translated the story from whatever-meter into good old-fashioned epic blockbuster movie.

Full disclosure, I've never read The Odyssey either. If you're like me, you've heard of at least some of the elements in the story. The Trojan Horse. Odysseus' ten-year voyage home after the end of the Trojan War. Odysseus' wife Penelope and son Telemachus enduring a host of suitors trying to woo Penelope into marriage. The cyclops. The sirens. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure I knew Odysseus encountered the sirens, but am actually remembering the sirens from Jason and the Argonauts. At least I've got the correct civilization's mythology.

This being a Nolan movie, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that the story isn't presented linearly. Don't worry, there's no time travel or dreams within dreams to melt your brain. Instead of depicting a straight timeline of Odysseus' voyage home and the events that occur during that voyage, we get the highlights in a series of flashbacks. Odysseus (Matt Damon) has been trapped on an island without his crew for seven years and his only company is a sea nymph named Calypso (Charlize Theron). Parallel to that, we jump every so often to Odysseus' palace in Ithaca, where Penelope (Anne Hathaway) has been humoring suitors for nearly two decades. Her now-grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) is aware that the suitors are looking for any reason to kill him, given he's the heir to the throne. Among the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who definitely has murder in his eyes.

The jumping back and forth between Odysseus (and Odysseus' flashbacks) and Penelope/Telemachus does a great job of building tension toward a climax. The drama of the film is in if Odysseus can make it back to Ithaca to reunite with his queen, prevent his son's exile/murder, and resume his place as king of Ithaca. The journey to get there is all of that other stuff. And all of that other stuff is just as exciting and tense to sit through, but for different reasons.

And that's the reason you should watch The Odyssey - the hero's journey. Yeah, that's where the hero's journey came from. Odysseus is THE hero. Practically every fiction movie ever made is based on the hero's journey (even a lot of non-fiction movies use the structure). Same goes for most books. And once you know that, you can't help but map other movies using The Odyssey. One of my favorite examples of this is my wife's breakdown of The Natural. It has a hero, a hero lost for many years, a cyclops, suitors trying to usurp a king, sirens, and more. As I've said in other reviews, my wife is a genius.

The other reason you should watch The Odyssey is...every other film reason that exists. You want great characters and character development? All of the above, plus John Leguizamo (Eumaeus), Lupita Nyong'o (Helen of Troy), Samantha Morton (Circe), Jon Bernthal (Menelaus), Himesh Patel (Eurylochus), Zendaya (Athena), and Elliot Page (Sinon). Do you like great visuals? Nolan blends CGI with practical effects (filming exclusively with IMAX cameras) to perfection. And the way he presents such things as Charybdis, the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the Trojan Horse, the underworld, and even Agamemnon (Bennie Safdie) is the sweetest of eye candy. I could go on about the sound, the costumes, the cinematography, the pacing, the everything else that makes this movie so very, very fantastic. But words can't do it full justice. Not even in Greek dactylic hexameter.

Rating: Worth twice the cost of IMAX tickets and you should see it at least twice.