The Odyssey review: Christopher Nolans magical epic is mammoth and fantastic

Running time: 173 minutes.Rated R (violence and some language).

In theaters.It’s hard to fathom going bigger than Batman and the father of the atomic bomb.But we are mere mortals and not that Zeus of directors, Christopher Nolan, the man whose ambitions grow more gargantuan with every movie.His latest Olympus to scale is “The Odyssey,” Homer’s Greek epic poem that has been adapted for the screen surprisingly few times considering it’s about 2,800 years old. Or, maybe that’s not so surprising.  Even the most gifted filmmakers would shudder at the old tale’s complicated web of characters, myriad magical creatures, brutal battles, watery locales and a dense mythology of gods and goddesses that many hazily recall from high school.Not Nolan.He took up Odysseus’ weighty bow, shot an arrow and scored another hit.His stunning and captivating “Odyssey” is the director in his David Lean era, eschewing the cerebral topics that tickled him in “Tenet,” “Inception” and to an extent “Oppenheimer,” and building his own “Lawrence of Arabia” with a transportive, sprawling and emotional adventure with visuals that will reduce even the most jaded movie buff into a giddy child.Nolan just having some dudes on horseback gallop across an ivory beach is a more awe-inspiring image than pretty much anything else you’ll see all year.Where “The Odyssey” falls into line with the “Interstellar” director’s popular oeuvre is its characteristic darkness.

Just because it’s set in and around the Ionian Sea doesn’t mean it’s jubilantly colorful like “Jason and the Argonauts.” After all, this is a deadly journey the hero would rather not be on.      And the 10-year absence of the missing King Odysseus, played by a bearded Matt Damon with the most gravitas he’s ever wielded, here seems as much to do with PTSD from the horrors of the Trojan War as being held captive by the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron).He’s a man reckoning with t...