July 30, 2026 – I've been traveling, so I missed the opening week of this movie, but I finally got around to watching it, and it lives up to the expectations I had for it. Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors around, and this is a movie that demands his full attention and the vast resources of Hollywood. They did this one right, featuring the kind of artistic and technical brilliance I expected.

What struck me most about Nolan's take on this ancient story (composed around the seventh or eighth century B.C.) is that it is mostly about regret, and how it relates to our current political situation. The story, told mostly in flashbacks, is about how Odysseus, the King of Ithica (played by Matt Damon of the “Jason Bourne” movies) reluctantly followed Greek army commander King Agamemnon to fight the Trojan War. Odysseus was a key to victory at Troy, but he is filled with regrets over the war, especially the way victory was achieved through deception.

Odysseus has even more regrets during the long journey home, finding his only escape in the mind-numbing lotus flowers provided by the nymph, Calypso (played by Charlize Theron of “Mad Max: Fury Road”). When Odysseus is finally able to confront the sins of his past, with the aide of the gods, he is able to return home, where he faces more challenges.

Odysseus, confronting his past actions, believes he and his men were punished for violating the laws of the gods. This includes the blinding of the cyclops, Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, and the killing of a cow belonging to the Sun God, Helios. Odysseus tries hard to save his crew, and at one point rescues them from the witch, Circe (played by Samantha Morton of “She Said”). Odysseus and his men visit the land of the dead, where he again confronts his past, and his regrets are multiplied. He learns that the victory in Troy was hollow. All is vanity.

During his years of travel and exile, Odysseus often thinks about how he, and other Greek warriors have been cursed for violating the law of the Gods. When he finally reaches home in Ithica, he finds more wickedness that he must deal with. Having been warned in advance of threats to his life, and to the life of his son, Telemachus (Tom Holland of recent Spider-Man movies) he arrives at his old palace in disguise, where he learns of the treachery of Antonius (Robert Pattinson of the “Twilight” movies). Antonius intends to be King of Ithica by any means necessary.

I recently watched another movie about this (and there have been many) “The Return,” (2024) starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. Nolan's new version of this old story differently in some respects, particularly in the way he shows how Odysseus seeks penance and finally deals with his regrets towards the men he led into battle in Troy, who still hate him in the land of the dead.

The Odyssey, in this telling of the story, is a morality play about what happens when the leaders of men break the law. That applies to our nation's leaders who are now engaged in a war with even less merit than the Trojan war, and who fill their own pockets with riches while their own subjects suffer cruel privations caused by bad leadership. Unlike Odysseus, our leaders will never know the suffering caused by their own decisions. That, unfortunately, happens mostly only in fictional stories like this.

I had my doubts about the casting of Matt Damon as Odysseus, but he handles this key role well. Other standouts include Tom Holland, as well as Jon Bernthal as wise Menelaus, king of Sparta and John Leguizamo as Eumaeus. Robert Pattinson, perhaps overrated as an actor, is nonetheless extremely convincing as the villainous Antonius. Unfortunately, women don't get great roles in this story, but Anne Hathaway does her best with the somewhat limited role of Penelope, wife of Odysseus and queen of Ithica.

This movie includes big scale action, as well as the magic of the old story. It does not try to explain away Charybdis, Scylla, Sirens or the deadly giant Laestrygonian warriors, or any other mythical elements. It shows them as being real. This is a long movie, but the story is compelling all the way through. It seems like all of its parts contribute to the whole of it. Despite that, it is very much a personal story about a man and his conscience who is grappling with his relationship to the law and morality. This movie rates a B+.

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