The Odyssey — A $250M Oscar Bait Flick

I went in not sure what to expect but tried to keep an open mind. Here are my thoughts.

Here's the honest truth: The Odyssey is very obviously built to win an Oscar, and once you see that, you can't un-see it. It's trying to be everything to everybody, and that's both its biggest strength and its biggest problem.

Genre: Action / Epic | Year: 2026 | Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line Up Front

The movie caters hard. Transgender actors, Helen of Troy recast with a Black actor, and a stack of artsy, dramatic "voting-reel" scenes that feel designed for Academy highlight clips more than for the story. And it's front-loaded with so many big names that, for the first chunk of the film, everyone's fighting to be the star instead of just letting the movie breathe.

Matt Damon is the lead, but I never really felt like he was the star. That's not a knock on him — it's that the movie is so crowded nobody gets to own it.

Who DID Own It

Tom Holland as his son — best performance in the movie, hands down. Kid can act.

Jon Bernthal — the ultimate guy-movie actor. My favorite no-BS character in the whole thing. Every time he's on screen it feels like an actual movie instead of a ceremony.

John Leguizamo — did his thing, did it well.

What I Liked

The music. It's Nolan, so you know the score is doing heavy lifting, and it does. Big, loud, and it sells the epic scale when the story doesn't.

The action. This is where the 5 stars come from. Plenty of it, tons of death scenes — and yeah, it gets a little gory, which I appreciated because a war epic that pulls its punches is a waste of time. A couple of solid jump scares in there too. Good ones, not cheap.

The flow. For the most part it moves well. There are slow spots, no question, but it recovers. And I've gotta give it this: the flashback scenes actually worked. I hate flashbacks — done wrong they turn a movie into a puzzle you didn't ask to solve. These didn't confuse me once. That's a win.

What I Didn't Like

The pandering. This is my real gripe. The film bends over backward to check every box — to the point where it gets historically inaccurate. Helen of Troy wasn't Black. She's cast that way here. Fine, it's a movie, make your choices — but then I noticed I didn't see any actual Greek actors cast in a movie about a Greek epic. That's the kind of thing that pulls you out of it. It doesn't feel like authenticity. It feels like a checklist.

The CGI/AI. Needed for the giant scenes, and it's... fine. Just okay. Nothing to write home about. You expect more from a Nolan budget.

The accents. Plain old American English. No accents at all. I get the logic — make sure everybody understands what's going on — but a Greek epic where nobody sounds Greek is a choice, and I think they could've done better with that.

The Ratings

Overall: 3 out of 5 stars. A good movie that keeps trying to be a "great" one and trips over its own ambition.

Action / Violence: 5 stars. Earned. Brings it.

Attention Keeper: Mostly. It held me most of the way, but there were a few stretches where I checked my phone.

Should You See It?

Yes, see it in the theater. The big screen genuinely adds to the experience — the scale, the sound, the whole thing earns the trip. But do you NEED IMAX? I saw it at an XL Criterion Theatre by AMC, and honestly, I'm not sure how much "better" true IMAX would've been. Don't empty your wallet over it.

The Verdict

The Odyssey is a good movie that wants to be an important one. The action delivers, the music carries it, and Tom Holland plus Jon Bernthal are worth the price of admission. But the Oscar-chasing checkbox casting and the crowded A-list roster keep it from being the lean, mean war epic it could've been.

3 out of 5 from me. A Man Movie that occasionally forgets it's supposed to be one.