Movie Review: ‘The Odyssey’

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Review by James Lindorf

Christopher Nolan is one of the few filmmakers alive who can open a movie on name recognition alone. His last film, “Oppenheimer,” won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and grossed over 950 million dollars worldwide. The anticipation for his follow-up, an adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” is enormous, and Universal Pictures is banking on that anticipation when the film opens everywhere on July 17th. The production is appropriately staggering, shot on IMAX film across Morocco, Italy, Norway, the UK, and New Zealand, with one of the most remarkable casts assembled in recent memory. None of that makes it a great film.

Odysseus (Matt Damon), king of Ithaca, is trying to get home after a ten-year siege of the walls of Troy. The journey takes nearly an additional 10 years and tests every dimension of his character, drawing in gods, monsters, and men who would rather he never arrived. Back in Ithaca, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) holds out hope while being pressured to choose a new husband for the good of the community. His son Telemachus (Tom Holland) searches for news of his father, fueled by frustration and longing that he has carried his entire life. The goddess Athena (Zendaya) watches over it all, curious about what Odysseus will do next and still stung by the Greeks’ use of a gift meant for her as a mechanism of war. The cast includes Robert Pattinson as Antinous, a sniveling one-note antagonist, with Lupita Nyong’o in a dual role, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal, Charlize Theron, Benny Safdie, and John Leguizamo among the many names filling out the roster.

Damon anchors the film and gets the full scope of the character. The loving husband, the military leader, the man determined to prevail against the gods who are deciding his fate. He is on screen frequently and has room to show multiple facets of Odysseus in a way most of the cast does not. Hathaway has the second most complete character in the film, a woman navigating grief, political pressure, and twenty years of uncertain hope, and she handles it beautifully. Holland is solid as Telemachus, capable of conveying his longing and frustration. Still, the character exists primarily because the story requires him at the end rather than because he drives anything forward. His eventual reunion with Damon, which should be one of the great emotional payoffs of the entire story, lands as simple relief before the film moves on to the next thing. It is the most significant missed opportunity in a film full of them.

Everyone else is here to have their name on the poster and their face in the trailer. Pattinson is the exception, making the most of a deliberately thin villain with clear relish. Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, the loyal friend to Odysseus and teacher and confidant to Telemachus, the only person outside the family who never wavers in his belief that the king will return. He is the film’s moral anchor in Ithaca but has a moment of pure shock value that would have John Wick chasing him down. The cameo that really stands out is from one of the least well-known names in the cast. Samantha Morton is a wonderful actress with plenty of credits and acclaim to her name, and she and Damon share one of the film’s most captivating interactions as they discuss the hidden nature of men.

The initial casting announcements were not without their controversy, as the racist and transphobic areas of the internet raged against Nyong’o and Page being added to the film. Nyong’o appears for roughly three minutes across two small roles, and Page delivers a genuinely good performance as Sinon with the limited screen time they are given. Anyone who generated outrage over either casting choice should feel somewhat embarrassed by how little it ultimately matters to the film. Anyone coming to see a favorite actor who is not named Damon, Hathaway, Holland, or Pattinson will be disappointed by what they are given to do.

“The Odyssey” looks and sounds extraordinary. Nolan and “Oppenheimer” cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema make beautiful use of the locations, and there are occasional sweeping shots of Odysseus’ vessel as it crosses vast open water that convey the scale of his journey. They rely on strobing lights, handheld cameras, and quick cutting to varying degrees of success. They embrace darkness, which is bold but occasionally makes events difficult to follow. Experiencing it on a massive IMAX screen is a genuinely impressive way to watch a movie. It is also not a defining element. If the technical peak of the theatrical experience is what defines your film, it means the film itself has failed to do that job. A Dolby theater, a regular screen, or eventually a television at home will deliver the same story with the same strengths and the same limitations.

Homer’s poem is structured across multiple locations and time points, told by ancient bards over many nights or consumed by readers in their own time. Nolan is faithful to that structure, bouncing between three narrative threads across the film’s nearly three-hour runtime. It is a choice that makes complete sense on the page and becomes the film’s central problem on screen. What works when a story unfolds over days of telling or across chapters, a reader can set down, becomes exhausting and unfocused when an audience is asked to hold it all in their heads at once. “The Odyssey” is a decidedly un-epic epic, its grandeur undercut by its own structure, leaving it with an episodic rather than monumental quality.

Nolan fans and lovers of large-scale mythological adventure will find plenty to appreciate here. It makes an interesting companion film to Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.” They both tackle theology, our connection to each other, the futility of war, and what we would be better off appreciating. But with a runtime approaching three hours and a structure that mistakes faithfulness to its source for cinematic momentum, do not be surprised to see a large opening weekend followed by a sharp drop as word spreads and audiences on the fence decide to wait for home viewing. “The Odyssey” earns a 3 out of 5.

Rating: R (Violence and Some Language)
Genre: Adventure, Action, Fantasy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): July 17th, 2026
Director: Christopher Nolan
Producer: Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan
Screenwriter: Christopher Nolan
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Production Co: Syncopy, Universal Pictures