The Guardian’s review describes Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey as a highly ambitious and visually grand retelling of Homer’s legend, centred less on heroic adventure than on the emotional and moral damage of war. It argues that the film reframes Odysseus’s journey home as a story about postwar trauma, showing how soldiers may physically return long before they recover psychologically, while families are left waiting and unable to move on. The reviewer sees this as giving the ancient myth modern relevance, with gods, hallucinations and flashbacks used to express inner anguish and dislocation.

Key details highlighted include Matt Damon as a sorrowful, battle-worn Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, Lupita Nyong’o as both Helen and Clytemnestra, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, and Elliot Page as Sinon. The review says Nolan presents the Trojan war as being driven not by romance but by trade interests, and it praises the film’s large-scale Imax imagery, unusual visual treatment of the sea, and intense battle scenes shot by Hoyte van Hoytema. It also stresses that the Trojan horse sequence and the Greeks’ victory matter less than the bitter aftermath, with Odysseus’s long return portrayed as the true heart of the story.