Dull

Rating: 4/10 (21 May 2000)

I'll admit it -- I had a tough time paying attention to this movie. Time after time during it's weary 2.5 hours my mind would start to drift away to more interesting and substantial things. This movie is unfortunately nothing more than a dull remake of Braveheart. It has all the stock characters in place: rugged, down-to-earth hero, his slain family, the princess who loves him and the effiminate prince who hates him. The whole movie was filmed in a murky indistinct way, and half the time you couldn't tell what was going on (except in the oddly lucent "floating" flashbacks when everything seemed very computerized and unreal). There are no high points of emotion in "Gladiator"; an epic movie needs ecstatic joys and breathtaking lows, but all this movie gives us is grim unpleasantness, which is not fun to watch. I don't know why there's so much crowing about the acting here: everybody does what they're required to do, but nothing extraordinary happens that couldn't have been done by thousands of actors across the country.