The big epic that forgets about character.

Rating: 3/10 (14 May 2000)

OK, everybody loves this movie, which can only make me wonder, why? Why has America become so easy to fool? We see the trailer for a film like `Gladiator' and get all pumped up and slap our $8.00 down as soon as we can. But after sitting through 2 ½ hours of a slow, unoriginal story, I could feel nothing but disappointment.
Yes, I will admit that there are some cool scenes (the first fight in the Roman Coliseum is by far the best), but that's not enough to make a good movie. We start with an ok plot, but one key element is missing  CHARACTER. None of these characters have any substance to them at all. They are all flat, stereotypical boring characters that have little to nothing of importance to say. I won't blame the actors, I think all of them have shown what they are capable of with a good script, but with a bad one  not even the most talented of actors can save a film. So, that is probably the biggest problem here, a poor script that lacks true character development and interesting dialogue.
But the direction is also poor. It was like Ridley was trying to do a little `Saving Private Ryan' but did not succeed in doing it nearly as well. To compare it to a similar film - `Braveheart'  we see why `Braveheart' was a much more interesting film, because it had a great bunch of characters that the audience identified with and cheered on. `Gladiator' just could not deliver, and boy  was the ending disappointing. I'm sorry people  if anybody can tell me why this is such a movie, please do so, but this movie just reinforces for me the idea that Hollywood will always undermine the intelligence of its audience. `Gladiator' gets a big fat 3 from me.