Russel WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THIS MESS!!

Rating: 4/10 (23 May 2000)

So this is how I start my summer movie bonanza. Looking forward to Russel and a good story and some big budget action to produce serious eye candy.
How disapointed I was soon to be. Gladiator is an unfortunate rehash of the same ole good guy revenges against evil and of course it's ALWAYS the evil one's love interest that is in love with the good guy. This movie falls into that same ole trap, and none of the actors and actresses have anything to work with. Everyone seems fine, Crowe who is normaly dynamic and plays interesting characters is uninteresting cause his character is the same banal hero in every BAD revenge movie out there. Joaquin Phoenix as Commudus is ok he seems like the only person in the film who looks like a Roman but he's BORING. It's not that they are bad, it's that their characters are so stereotypical and bleak that there's nothing interesting about them. And then of course it plays into that HOPELESS cliche when the weak evil guy we all know how pathetic he is, will try to defeat the hero in a battle we know he will loose. WHY??? cause he's a looser. Gee couldn't figure that out..
So then I would think at LEAST there'd be some good action in this picture.. Wrong again.. Sure some of the battle scenes are neat, but I found them boring and they were hampered by the BIGGEST complaint I have with this picture. This film was SOOOOOOOOO darkly shot that I could barely even make out the characters faces. There is nothing wrong with this effect but it was used so poorly here that the fight scenes were chaotic and blurry (I found my eyes jumping all over the first battle scene), to the simple dialogue scenes where I could barely see even the characters eyeballs.

Historical inacuracies?? Probably several, do I care? No. I went to this film for the entertainment value and it didn't even give me that!

Disapointing
Rating 4 out of 10