high on style, low on substance

Rating: Null/10 (14 May 2000)

The first half of this movie you can throw in the garbage, it's slow moving and well, flat out boring. It's the second half where the interesting stuff starts to happpen. Even the acting gets noticeably better the farther into the film we go; it's almost as if the cast is getting better as they go along - although, russel crowe was good throughout (but you'd expect that much.) Basically, the core components at work in this film are its _fight_ scenes, which range from ok to pretty good, but the direction often gets on ones nerves - the camera never really holds on to any one image for more than a split second and instead switches or flashes all over the places and what we get are dozens of little stabs and jabs, flipped quickly in front of us like cheap cartoons drawn on a deck of cards. The overall plot was also very predictable. You could see things coming at you a mile away and then cringed when the characters acted so surprised to learn the news. As I say, the last half is the films saving grace and even that could be stripped down to a much shorter version of the key gladiator fight scenes.
The best thing I can say about this film is its cinematography and the Roman backdrops are very cool. Otherwise, the film is an overhyped, predictable soap opera, with some good fight scenes filled in with a whole lot of pretty filler.