Entertaining...but not a great "Roman Epic."

Rating: 8/10 (20 May 2000)

Russell Crowe - very good performance. Great fight/battle scenes/tiger shots etc and even the special effects worked well - cool shots of the Colosseum. The film however lacks the quality of other Roman epics such as "Spartacus." Apart from Russell Crowe and Richard Harris, the other members of the cast weren't too impressive.(perhaps due to poor dialogue and lack of character development).
Contrast this to Spartacus - Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier, Tony Curtis, Charles Laughton and of course the fantastic Peter Ustinov (best supporting actor Oscar) - what a cast! Yet again like so many other films - music was unnecessarily included in scenes where silence would have been far better. Especially that early scene in the film (*spoiler alert) where Marcus Aurelius tells his son (the irritating Commodus) that he will not become Emperor. What follows is is a way-over-the-top emotionally charged sobbing scene with highly dramatic music involving two characters we hardly know. Its as if Ridley Scott is shouting at us "You must feel emotion here!" - ridiculous - the viewer doesn't care about Commodus at this stage of the film! - it made me cringe instead. Btw: What was with all those "flashbacks"?
The choice of music was iffy at times and the "incest" overtones - how did that help the film? The character of Commodus was poor - extremely annoying at times (like a brat) and cowardly. Apart from all that it was an entertaining film - it was an epic in terms of duration but not in quality. 7/10.