Quite simply the best epic movie ever made !

Rating: 10/10 (14 October 2007)

After my recent re-viewing of the film, I felt obliged to leave a comment. Gladiator is the epic that makes all other epics look bad, it's flawless in almost every way. The music is more than top notch: Hans Zimmer has written his best score in years, the locations are astonishingly beautiful, the colors used are very well chosen and add to the certain atmosphere the movie has, the acting is brilliant: there are three Oscar-worthy performances here (Djimon Hounsou, Joaquin Phoenix, Russell Crowe)...all the elements come together just right and that's really so unique that it's a thrill to watch.
There are two things that completely make or break a movie for me: the beginning and the end. A movie can be brilliant up until the end but if that last scene disappoints, I leave the movie theater with a bad aftertaste. Luckily, in Gladiator, the ending is brilliantly haunting, which adds so much to the movie. The music accompanying the scene is one of the best fitting scene-music pieces ever. It's just indescribable.
While some may argue that it doesn't deserve all the praise it's getting because it's 'just an action-movie', I feel that it's so much more than that: the dialog is great, the acting likewise, and while the movie may have a large number of action-sequences, that's not what it's really about. It's a tale of a person, a very real person, which is a truly remarkable one.
After recently seeing Troy, 300 and Alexander, I'm convinced now more than ever, that Gladiator will be the best epic ever made for years to come ( even despite the growth in technical ability over the last few years). It's always been on my best-of list and that's not likely going to change soon. If I could give more than 10, I would, but since I can't...:-)
10/10