An Excelant Film

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2002)

**SPOILERS**It saddens me to see so many uninformed and under-intelligent reviews for this film, which is unfortunatly the same for many other films on this site, "Russel Crowe was pathetic" is one comment, this user must have been blind or concentrating too much on their popcorn to realise that this could not be more wrong. The comment on the box, "Russel Crowe's performance hits the screen with such force that you can't rip your eyes away" is far more closer to the truth, the film deserved very much the oscars that it received.
Many would see this movie as old by now, but I am writing this today after watching it again and after all these years, it still has the same staying power that it had when I watched the first time.
The movie is about a Roman general who has the utmost pride and loyalty to the Emporer, played by Richard Harris. Who has been betrayed by his son, Claudius, **Spoiler** who murders Richard Harris's character in order to circumvent his father's decision that Claudius will not be emporer after his father dies. In order to succeed the throne against that wish. ** End Spoiler **
There after, the General, "Maximus" played by Russel Crowe is also betrayed by the mentally disturbed Claudius, who murdered maximus's family because Maximus would not swear loyalty to Claudius as the New Emporer.

Maximus ends up as a slave to fight in the gladiator battles that Claudius has planned.
Maximus now sets out to get revenge on Claudius and from there the plotline develops into a tangled web of good versus evil, in places it seems that the good will not prevail and in others you think that it might. Quite a twister!
One thing I will say is that there is probably too much gore throughout the film, although this is balanced by the fact that games such as those actually happened in Roman times and probably were a lot more gruesome, something to think about....
Anyway I think that there was no need for so much gore to get the plotline accross effectivley.
The ending leaves no loose ends, which improves my opinion of the film considerably.
Loose ends really annoy me at the end of films, some of the films that I had initially thought were good, end up with disappointing endings and many loose ends, which greatly reduce my final opinion of them.
If I was to give an overall opinion of this film, I'd say that this is probably the best film I have seen to date, followed closely only by "Titanic", "Lord Of The Rings" and/or "Men In Black"
10 out of 10 See it if you havn't and watch it again if you have! LOL :)