Finally, a movie that takes its time to tell a story

Rating: 8/10 (7 March 2002)

After seeing wave after wave of mindless action movies, I was actually quite surprised to for once see a movie that took its time (almost three hours) to tell an epic tale of courage, love, etc.
That story is far from perfect: the movie can be horribly slow, there are plot holes, and the entire thing borders on the sentimental, but as a whole the story is quite impressive.
The action scenes in this movie, which are not as frequent as you might expect, are quite well-done for the most part, although they are edited in a very haphazard way, making the battles very hard to follow.

Gladiator is by no means a classic, but it's a welcome change from the explosion-per-minute, mindless Jerry Bruckheimer and Ronald Emmerich (to name a few) crap, and it's a movie that has a really epic feeling to it. It make me feel great for at least a week after first seeing it.

*** out of **** stars