"Gladiator" brought a poetic vision in a new and very cinematically richly way...

Rating: 9/10 (25 October 2005)

When you go to the ruins of Rome now, you get really no sense of the scale and the grandeur of what that forum would have been It's hard to get it anywhere except from some of the great epic films of the past like "Quo Vadis," "Ben-Hur," "Demetrius and the Gladiators," "Barabbas," and "The Fall of the Roman Empire."
Scott's "Gladiator" is build around a mythic character, a man trying to find his way home... It is around someone finding inner strength in a tough time Maximus is somebody who doesn't want to be a soldier We realize this is a man who is pursuing the ultimate which is transcending death and finding love after death which completely transforms your reaction to the man, a man who is very, very strong but very, very loving
The plot, familiar from Anthony Mann's " Fall of the Roman Empire," had Crowe as Maximus, the proud well-loved Roman general in the army of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). Maximus whose motto is 'Strength and Honor' is like a son to Aurelius, a statement that left Aurelius' own son, Commodus perturbed...
Disappointed by the news that his father privately decides to name Maximus his successor, and being a young ambitious son lusting for power, he murders his father, and orders a strike against the general... One of the best scenes of the motion picture is where Commodus is told by his father that he is not going to be the emperor Joaquin Phoenix is easy to hate in a frightening and vile character...
Ridley Scott creates a lot of beautiful scenes between the characters He did some fantastic work in all of those wonderful scenes in the film But there's another moment between the emperor and his daughter Lucilla (the Danish beauty Connie Nielsen) that I loved very much Harris says, "Let's not speak of politics. Let us pretend that you are a loving daughter and I'm a good father. " They walk for a few seconds and Lucilla says, "This is a pleasant fiction." I felt this short scene so sophisticated It seemed to me wonderfully insightful, simple in terms of amount of words, but complex in terms of understanding this strange relationship
One of the most successful bits of casting was Oliver Reed He's a harsh and rough businessman who makes his living off the death machine and yet, inside, there was some kind of ethical person that would come out at the right moment
Ridley Scott's epic film does not romanticize a democratic Golden Age of Rome but a decaying, blood thirsty empire on the edge of its fall... Through its beautiful music, through Russell's performance and through Ridley's soulfulness, "Gladiator" brought a poetic vision in a new and very cinematically richly way that really gave the audience something different, so emotional and so intimate