New Delhi, July 17 -- I'd like to believe John Leguizamo is Eumaeus in The Odyssey because he was Tybalt in Romeo + Juliet (1996). To watch Baz Luhrmann's film as a 12-year-old and hear Shakespeare's language from the mouths of Leguizamo and Harold Perrineau and Dash Mihok rewired my brain. In Christopher Nolan's latest film, Leguizamo plays a blind swineherd on the island of Ithaca living in the hope that his king Odysseus (Matt Damon) will return. It's an oddly tender performance, but the electricity of his Tybalt is missing. In its place, extending across the entire cast, is a more limited provocation-imagine if ancient Greeks spoke like present-day Americans instead of posh Brits?

Nolan takes Homer's epic from its pedestal, only to d...