Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, The Dark Knight) achieves something monumental and magnificent with his robust, stridently adrenalized adaptation of Homer’s eighth-century BCE epic poem The Odyssey. In this modern interpretation that still pays exhilarating homage to old-school sword-and-sandal classics like Jason and the Argonauts and Ben-Hur, the writer-director uses a mixture of gritty realism and unabashed melodramatic excess to bring his saga to life. The film’s three-hour running time vanishes in the blink of an eye, and all of it is grounded in a pugnacious, rugged performance by star Matt Damon that’s the finest of his career.

Nolan once again uses a nonlinear style (as he did in Memento, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer). The story begins with Telemachus (Tom Holland) trying to convince his stoic mother Penelope (Anne Hathaway) to refuse the marriage requests from the slovenly, ill-tempered suitors in their banquet hall, believing that he should fill his father’s shoes as Ithaca’s king. The narrative flows, suitably like a poem, this way and that from there, with the focus gently shifting to a grizzled and graying Odysseus (Damon) trying to put the pieces of his fragmented memory back together while resting in the arms of Calypso (Charlize Theron).

It is here where Nolan begins to spin his inescapable web of narrative enchantment. Telemachus secretly leaves Ithaca to visit King Menelaus (Jon Bernthal). Penelope verbally parries with the suitors, most notably their serpentine Machiavellian ringleader, the duplicitous Antinous (Robert Pattinson). As for Odysseus, he must relive all of the past 20 years with a determined Calypso: from the Trojan Horse to the fall of Troy to, ultimately, the slow, steady death of his valiant men as they attempt to make their way across the water to Ithaca and home.

I’m no Homer scholar, so I’m not going to debate the historical “accuracy” of what Nolan is attempting in terms of casting and dialogue (although the few choice F-words do stand out like an amusing sore thumb). What I will say is that there is no weak link anywhere amid the massive ensemble. Standouts include Pattinson, Hathaway, Bernthal, John Leguizamo as Odysseus’s trusted servant and advisor Eumaeus, Elliot Page as the tragically heroic Sinon, Ryan Hurst as Telemachus’s friend and bodyguard Mentor, and Himesh Patel as Odysseus’s second-in-command, Eurylochus. A ravishingly raw Lupita Nyong'o also makes an indelible impression in her brief scenes as both a post–Trojan War Helen and her fiery, vengeance-seeking sister, Clytemnestra.

But the standout performance — other than Damon’s — that makes The Odyssey come alive is delivered by two-time Academy Award nominee Samantha Morton, who appears roughly halfway through. Odysseus and his men have had a calamitous encounter with the Laestrygonians. Two of their ships are lost. Over half their number are dead. They believe they have found sanctuary on the island of Aeaea. While Odysseus is forced to go hunt on his own (his men are no longer sure they should follow him), Eurylochus leads a small group to the home of a lone woman. They insist she both feed them now and also give them enough provisions to sustain them on the final legs of their trip to Ithaca, even if that leaves her with nothing.