satisfying epic, whatever the nit-pickers say

Rating: 8/10 (21 May 2000)

I've been reading numerous comments about this movie over the last few weeks and I've been amazed at how pedantic many of the criticisms have been. To all those of you complaining how weak and cliched the screenplay is I'd ask you to name one movie set in Ancient Rome where there is no clunky or camp dialogue. What do you want,exactly? How would you have improved it? Have a go, if you think you're so hot.
I'm not saying it's perfect by any means. However, on balance, any reasonable movie-goer should be able to admit that the triumphs outweigh the failures: beautiful cinematography (the complaints that the choppy editing in the fight scenes make it difficult to follow...please...don't you think the intention might have been to give the viewer the feeling of being in the heart of the action?),strong performances (Crowe's magnetic in a slow-burning, intensely powerful, dignified performance: can you imagine if Mel Gibson, or...eek...Arnie had been given the role?; Pheonix was superb with a complex and fascinating villain; Neilson was quietly impressive as a woman torn between 4 men: father, ex-lover, brother and son; even Oliver Reed proved he could act when he could be ar**d) and a screenplay that was not without cliche, but was able to tell a big story very concisely (the scene with Commodus and Lucilla arriving in Germania had barely 100 words of dialogue, but gave us mountains of information about both characters).
Those of you complaining that there was not enough back-story or information about the motivations of the key characters, do you honestly need every last detail to be explicit? You are allowed to use your imagination sometimes.
To conclude, I'd say that it delievered everything that one could ask for from a film of that genre, and I felt I'd had my money's worth...even on second viewing. You can nit-pick any film you care to mention, but why not just sit back, enjoy the spectacle and let yourself be transported to another (historically inaccurate, fair enough criticism)era for a couple of entertaining and sometimes moving hours?