The Odyssey      Director: Christopher NolanCert: 15AStarring: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya, Charlize TheronRunning Time: 2 hrs 52 minsCinema history is littered with the disastrously ambitious pet projects that directors got to make after winning all the Oscars. When Christoper Nolan announced he was to follow up Oppenheimer by adapting a foundational text of western literature, more than a few pondered the (appropriately Greek) concept of hubris. In recent weeks, overheated anti-woke warriors, performatively annoyed by racially diverse casting, have wished the gods’ anger upon this singularly ambitious film-maker.They do not look to have got their way. Yes, Nolan’s take on Homer’s classic, the tale of Odysseus’s journey back to Ithica years after the Trojan Wars, suffers from a few of his signature failings. Despite being set around the Mediterranean, it takes place in pervasive gloom that overdoes weather as pathetic fallacy. The groaning celebrity cast (another Nolan trait) offers the most conspicuous connection with sword-and-sandals flicks of Hollywood’s golden age. You know all these people. Matt Damon is Odysseus. Tom Holland is Telemachus. Zendaya is Athena. Oh, for a fresh face to break up the galactic clutter.Those gripes acknowledged, it would take a malcontent of the grimmest stripe to deny the creative momentum that Nolan has here generated. This is a vast, crunchy entertainment that touches on durable themes while ensuring we are never more than five minutes from violent stirring that will cause the hugest cinema to quake as if giants were dismantling the foyer. This is the best of Nolan in, perhaps surprisingly, the most appropriate setting.The story has been so repeated it can bear only brief summary. Sometime after victory at Troy, Odysseus remains still (literally for once) a lotus eater on the isle of Ogygia with the persuasive nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron, and why not?).At home, his wife, Penelope, in the convincingly fraught form of Anne Hathaway, repels brutish suitors – Robert Pattinson’s oily Antinous among them – while striving to believe her husband still lives. Her son, Telemachus, fumes. After some more throat-clearing, Odysseus and his crew set sail for the old country again. Sirens, witches and a one-eyed colossus await.It is fruitless to worry if The Odyssey looks and sounds “authentic”. Even if the film were a perfect facsimile of this locale in 1200 BC, nobody alive could confirm that was the case. As every mainstream film-maker has done when tackling classical texts, Nolan and his gifted team – the production designer Ruth De Jong and the costume designer Ellen Mirojnick among them – have, successfully in their case, set out to create an stylised ancient world that succeeds on its own terms: various eras of armour blending into a catch-all heroic aesthetic. [ Christopher Nolan interview: ‘It’s exciting to bring The Odyssey out. It’s also terrifying’Opens in new window ]Some may find the decision to speak only in American accents disconcerting at first, but, no more absurd than using only Rada vowels, the strategy quickly fades from notice.The film necessarily has an episodic quality. Working through a moral theme that connects with modern sensibilities, the script has much to say about “Zeus’s law” – an argument for mutually beneficial hospitality – as we move past shrouded sirens to a sticky Hades. Kept aloft by an adequately stolid performance from Damon, the film is at its best when at its wildest and weirdest. The lumbering Cyclops, who suggests Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, ends up as a pitiable figure. Samantha Morton’s sly Circe anchors a superb sequence that digs deep into a horror sensibility.Maybe the film, as is sometimes the case with Nolan, lacks an emotional core. But the sensory overload is so enormous that it proves hard to care. Shot fluidly on 70mm Imax cameras by Hoyte van Hoytema, and scored with symphonic wit by Ludwig Göransson, this take on the epic return of the sometime Ulysses should wear away even the most passionate resistance.In cinemas from Friday, July 17th