Disappointing to the maximus!

Rating: 1/10 (19 May 2000)

This film is stunningly bad.
Russell Crowe is so wasted here. And Connie Neilsen could be beautiful so much more entertainingly somewhere else.
The sound is muddy, the effects attempt what they can't deliver, and the script is so relentlessly incredible that not even Crowe's acting and Neilsen's astonishing good looks can rescue it.
The initial battle scene, like so many, is ridiculous. The opposing forces are cheaply miniscule. The Romans chose laughably bad ground (downhill from the enemy!). And the ease with which the Romans position there cavalry behind the opponents is absurd. It was nice, if incomprehensible, to catch Scott's homage to the great film, ZULU -- the Germans seemed to have the Zulu battle chants down pat.
Most annoyingly, Scott seems to think that an occasional spray of blood and a sickeningly jostled camera equals Big Action. More like Mild Nausea. We see much of this, alas, later in the movie, too.
OK, so we grant a little geographic and medical license to Maximus as he rides, wounded, across much of Europe, to find his family murdered. But from that moment all credulity must be withheld. Since when does a Roman citizen place himself in jeopardy of being impressed by slave traders just because he makes the grave error of being unconscious? It might have made more sense if he'd woken up belowdecks on a British ship of the line in the 18th century.
The climax of the film, though momentarily pleasing in the accuracy of its downbeat rendition of one's chance of succeeding in a plot against a Roman emperor, once again dismisses credibility: Commodus thinks he'll do better against a genuine heavyweight than Johnny Friendly did against Terry Malloy. Or imagine Al Gore suggesting that he and George Dubyah settle this thing mano a mano. Same idea. Puh-lease.
The film was kind of a pagan BEN HUR, but without Jesus, the horses, the (real) crowds, and any significance whatever. And it lacked, especially, a crazy emperor like Caligula of the ROBE movies, played in his film debut by the brilliant Jay Robinson ("Messalina!"). Too much post-modern dysfunctional family stuff among Scott's Caesars.
Yuck.