Costumes and Melodrama

Rating: 1/10 (18 July 2007)

There is not an ounce of verisimilitude in this entire film. Instead of dialogue between characters, everybody pontificates. Secondary characters don't act, they just stand around staring blankly in the background. Cardboard cutout blatantly CGI Rome. Disembodied fake cheering crowds in the arena. Bombastic music masking dramatic vacuum. Ridley editing like his tourette-suffering brother Tony Scott. Everything is fake, the story has no message. Killer kills as soldier. Killer kills as gladiator. Killer kills Emperor. That's it ! Art direction triumphs over realism.
Spartacus is not just twice as good a film, or even ten times better. It's simply a different class of movie in every single aspect of film making.