Homer's wanderer has been a template for survival stories, road movies, and war films for as long as cinema has existed. The ten-year journey from Troy to Ithaca carries everything: divine interference, monstrous obstacles, the slow erosion of a self. It is the oldest story about a man who cannot go home, and cinema has been retelling it since before sound.
These four films approach the source at different distances. One adapts it faithfully. One borrows its bones. One rewrites it in American vernacular. One tells the war that made the journey necessary. They are not ranked. Watch them in order.
