Good Hollywood Epic

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2002)

It strikes me from the readers comments of the IMDB that as many people dislike GLADIATOR as like it. True it`s the sort of story we`ve seen before in several genres where good defeats evil but what`s wrong with that ? It`s well acted with Joaquin Phoenix playing the role of villain the right side of camp , well supported by a bunch of British thespians - Notice how many of the bad guys are played by Americans and good guys by Brits . Don`t see that too often - and Ridley Scott pulls out all the stops to make GLADIATOR a technical triumph , a shame he didn`t win the Oscar for best director , he`ll be hard pushed to make a film as good as this again. And accolades to John Mathieson and Hans Zimmer for photography and music respectively.
GLADIATOR is one of three old fashioned Hollywood epics to have won the Oscar for best picture in recent years . After seeing the overrated BRAVEHEART and the truly awful TITANIC and comparing them with true epics like GONE WITH THE WIND , BEN HUR and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA I thought to myself " Alas they don`t make them like they used to ". Then GLADIATOR came along and proved me wrong.
As a footnote the DVD release to this film is excellent. If anyone at Columbia pictures is reading this can we please a similar standard of release for Scott`s upcoming DVD of BLACKHAWK DOWN ?