Masterful entertainment: 85% epic 15% history for the new-comer star Crowe.

Rating: 8/10 (22 May 2000)

This must be a nostalgic time. After the highly old-fashioned Mission to Mars (questionable but fascinating, and not as ugly as seen by most reviewers), here comes `Gladiator', a piece of cinema which refers directly to the righteously quoted milestones of the genre (Ben Hur and Spartacus). Engaged in the most expensive production of his life, Ridley Scott proved himself, again, at ease in creating deep impact visual scenery. The rules of entertainment force him to go very shallow with historic context and motivation: what counts here is to see an epical hero regain his dignity and obtain is vengeance in a world of hardly conceivable brutality.
The highest point of the whole movie is the fast yet sharp description of Maximus as a `Homo Pius': it happens when he prays for protection and good advice in front of the small images portraying his family and his ancestors, and even more when, during the movie, those little stones become symbols of love-beyond-the-life of a simple family man. This is typical RS cinema's blueprint: the depiction of a weak and lonely hero, carrying on the burden of loyalty and honor and the trembling light of Reason in a world of cruelty and darkness (see for reference The Duellists, Blade Runner, Black Rain, 1992: The Conquest of Paradise). As simple and almost simplistic this scheme may seem, RS is in perfect command of the matter as he tells this story staged at the sunset of the Roman Imperial era: the opening battle sequence is shorter but more effective than the Bravehearts' ones, and the `ludi circenses' in a stunningly realistic Coliseum are powerful and convincing.
Many have complained about the mistakes in historical and especially linguistic details (for an Italian, who has studied Latin in high school, it is painful to notice it: would it have been too expensive to hire a Latin language consultant?): I think that they are almost inevitable in a production of such a complexity, and you better not look, in a movie, for something that you should find in a good book of history. All in all: Gladiator is a nostalgic and masterful piece of entertainment, in which glows the vague hallmark of an authentic `auteur', even if this latter is deeply compromised with the dirty Hollywood money.
Ah, and don't worry about strict historical accuracy: Hollywood is as likely to produce a perfectly faithful Roman movie, as it is the rest of the World to produce any Roman movie at all.