Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Derek Jacobi
Rating: 4.5/10
I’ve already seen this film once before and I honestly don’t know why I decided to sit through it again. Beside from the fact that this kind of stabby-stabby-swordy-swordy-Ancient-Romans film is far from the kind of the genre I like, it was so Hollywoody, so overdone, so cheesy, so dull, and ultimately so poorly written it’s a wonder it has the good reviews that it does.
It was also your typical extremely formulaic Hollywood film. The characters were very one-sided: you have the brave Spanish commander; the evil and arrogant emperor; his beautiful and oppressed sister (who just happens to be the love interest of the gladiator protagonist); the traitor, who turns good at the end, and so many other predictable characters and “plot twists”. And of course, everyone lives happily ever after at the end.
It follows the journey of Maximus, a commander-turned-slave who is forced to fight against all manner of warriors and wild animals in the Colosseum. I wouldn’t have minded the film so much if that was all it was, but it was also about all their love lives, their children, their families, their emotions, blah, blah, blah. The only thing that salvaged Gladiator from a 1/10 was the above-average acting and the computer-generated Roman cities which were done very well. Overall, the scale and drama of the fights in the arena were executed very well; those fights were certainly the best bits – if only the film were made up only of those, without all the corniness!
