Homer — or whoever assembled the Odyssey out of centuries of oral retelling — did not have to write it that way. Of heroes and villainsFor all its flaws, Nolan's film, by the account of its defenders as much as its detractors, gets something right that a great deal of Western commentary on both Iran and Gaza gets wrong: it locates the crime with the parties dressed as the aggrieved. The crime Nolan's film locates in the horse was never simply "violating xenia". The moment Troy fell to a gift, that wager collapsed for everyone, ‘gods’ included. Nolan's film, for all that it may have gotten wrong about dialogue and pacing, at least refuses to let Odysseus off the hook for the horse.