The Odyssey

Starring: Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi, Isabella Rossellini, et al.

The ancient world's most spectacular epic unfolds on screen as an adventure of breathtaking beauty and power in this lavishly produced adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. An extraordinary international cast sweeps you into the heroic age of the mighty warrior-king Odysseus as his victorious return from the Trojan War becomes a decade long quest to reach his homeland and his faithful wife, Penelope. Aided by the goddess Athena, Odysseus braves all the terrors and temptations of a mysterious, far-flung world, matching wits and wiles with a fantastic array of beings both mortal and monstrous. It's the voyage of a lifetime, and a journey you an your family will never forget, in this glorious retelling of one of the greatest adventure tales of all time.

• Format: DVD
• Language: English
• UPC: 683904542403
• Release Date: October 2015
• Rating: PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
• Publisher: Mill Creek Entertainment
• Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
• Starring: Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi, Isabella Rossellini, Vanessa Williams, Bernadette Peters, Irene Papas, Geraldine Chaplin, Eric Roberts, Christopher Lee, Jeroen Krabbe
• Runtime: 3 hours, 12 minutes
• Number of Disks: 1
• Other Video Info: DVD
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.5" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

The Odyssey (TV Mini-Series 1997)

You can tell right off that this is made for television (naturally, aspect ratio: 1.33:1). The stilted dialogue and worse yet start with the feel of a spaghetti western. Filming Locations are Malta and Turkey. Hang in there, as you will get over the cheap production and have fun identifying the 41 different actors playing the different Odyssey characters, including the gods. Also, even though this sometimes seems hokier than you can stand, if you read the epics of the Iliad and Odyssey, you will hear lines and plots directly from those epics, which lets you know that someone read them before this production. However, they add a tad of their drama as if the original was too bland. The 10-year war with Ilium takes all of 15 minutes and gets out of the way, so we have plenty of time to chronicle the 10-year sojourn home. That is, you will not get the story of the journey or even whether they make it home. But be prepared for more spaghetti acting, a little zither music, and stilted dialog. The one thing I missed was when Odysseus’ dog recognizes him before dying. It is as if they ripped out the last page of “The Call of the Wild.” However, in retrospect, this is a good presentation with most of the story's purpose intact.