The Odyssey Review: A Stunning Epic for Modern Audiences

The framework is Homer’s Odyssey, but Nolan, working with a co-writer, treats the poem less as a sacred text and more as a narrative puzzle box. We open with the fall of Troy - a chaotic, single-take tracking shot through burning streets that establishes Matt Damon’s Odysseus as a man of weary strategy, not brute force. The journey home to Ithaca is structured as a series of set-pieces: the cyclops Polyphemus (rendered as a terrifying, near-silent brute), the witch Circe (played by an unrecognizable actress in heavy prosthetics), the Sirens (whose song is a layered soundscape of lost memories), and a detour to the Underworld that feels like a fever dream. The film splits its focus between Odysseus’s voyage and the parallel story on Ithaca, where Tom Holland’s Telemachus grows from a sulking prince into a reluctant leader, pressured by Robert Pattinson’s sycophantic, dangerously charming Antinous. Anne Hathaway’s Penelope is given agency beyond weaving and waiting - she’s a political operator, playing the suitors against each other. The climax, the bloodbath in the great hall, is less a victory lap and more a moral reckoning.

Let’s start with what works. The scale is staggering. Nolan shoots the Mediterranean (actually filmed off the coast of Greece and in a massive water tank in London) as both a beautiful prison and an endless void. The scene where Odysseus’s ship is swallowed by Charybdis - a whirlpool visualized with practical water effects and minimal CGI - is the single most impressive action sequence I’ve seen this year. The sound design, as always with Nolan, is aggressive: the clash of bronze swords, the shriek of a harpy, the low hum of the sea’s rage. It’s immersive to the point of being overwhelming.

Matt Damon’s Odysseus is a fascinating choice. He doesn’t play the godlike warrior. He plays a man who is smart but tired, capable of cruelty (his treatment of the cyclops is genuinely unsettling) and tenderness in equal measure. His monologue about wanting to go home “not because I love her, but because I remember her” is the film’s emotional anchor. Tom Holland does solid work as Telemachus, though his casting feels like a concession to younger audiences - he’s physically slight in a way that undermines the character’s final, violent transformation. Anne Hathaway has maybe twenty minutes of screen time, but she makes every second count; her Penelope is sharp, ironic, and deeply lonely.

The real problems are in the middle. The Calypso sequence, starring Charlize Theron, is visually gorgeous (a cave on a cliff, waterfalls, bioluminescent light) but dramatically inert. It’s a 25-minute detour that feels like a different, slower movie. Worse, Travis Scott as the Bard - yes, that Travis Scott - is a bewildering miscast. He’s not bad, exactly, but his modern, rhythmic delivery breaks the film’s reality every time he opens his mouth. It’s a stunt casting that doesn’t land.

Pacing is the elephant in the room. At 173 minutes, the film drags in the middle third. The journey becomes repetitive: land on an island, fight a monster, lose men, sail away. Nolan’s usual structural rigor (he loves a clock ticking down) isn’t here. The story is episodic by nature, and despite his best efforts, he can’t hide that. The final hour, however, is pure adrenaline - the archery contest, the slaughter of the suitors, the reunion with Penelope - and it almost justifies the wait.

Pros

• The Charybdis whirlpool sequence is a landmark of practical filmmaking
• Matt Damon gives a career-best performance: cunning, weary, morally gray
• Anne Hathaway’s Penelope is a stealth MVP - her final scene with Odysseus is devastating
• The sound mix is aggressive and brilliant, especially the Sirens’ layered voices
• The Underworld sequence is a psychedelic, terrifying masterpiece

Cons

• The middle act is structurally bloated and loses narrative momentum
• Travis Scott’s Bard role is a distracting, ill-fitting cameo
• Tom Holland is physically unconvincing in the action climax
• At 173 minutes, it overstays its welcome by about 15 minutes
• Robert Pattinson’s Antinous is underused - his menace is hinted at, never fully realized

The Odyssey is not Nolan’s best film - that’s still Inception or The Dark Knight - but it is his most ambitious. It’s a movie that tries to fit Homer’s sprawling, 24-book poem into a single 173-minute narrative, and the seams show. The Calypso detour sags, the Bard subplot is a mistake, and the runtime tests your patience. But when it works, it works like a thunderclap. The final hour is some of the most gripping, violent, and strangely tender filmmaking of the decade. Matt Damon’s Odysseus, bloody and exhausted, holding his wife’s hand in silence, earns every one of those 173 minutes. This is a flawed epic, but it’s an epic nonetheless. For those willing to surrender to its rhythms, the journey is worth the trouble.