The first truly grand movie this year

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2000)

During the first five monthes of 2000, I sat through loads of dreck, waiting for some film to live up to the annus mirabilis that was 1999. I went to Erin Brockovich, and was repulsed by the manipulation of the audience in that film, not to mention the deification of Julia Roberts and passed through the film. I decided not to look for a good movie, just an entertaining one, and I went to U-571. Instead of giving solid action, it tried to build characters into a story that couldn't handle characters. They piled cliches on an unsturdy frame, and the all film colapsed. I really wanted Gladiator to be the film that I would love, and I truly did love it. The opening has echoes of Saving Private RYan in style, but goes beyond that film because it truly ties us in to Russell Crowe's character, instantly. We know who he is, we identify with him, and we are instantly willing to follow him through to the end of the film. All of the fight scenes are on a grand scale, perfectly mounted and expertly executed. But there is more to this film than action. Russell Crowe had better become a movie star with this movie, because after The Insider, he truyly deserves it. He is a romantic, heroic, nobleman in the grandest sense of the word. Joaquin Phoenix is suitably over the top at times, yet there is depth to his characters. He is a human villain, and yet a hissable one none the less. That is great movie making. The political aspects of the film are also magnificent, adding a sociological dimension to the film that at no time feels like the film is teaching the audience. It is worked into the story organically. It also manages to work this massive scope into the context of a conventional, though thoroughly compelling and engrossing, revenge story. All in all, this is extraordinary, majestic, wonderful work. Now that I've listed everything I can think of that is great about this movie, allow me to take this opportunity to curse the name of Hans Zimmer. His score is, until the last twenty or thirty minutes of the movie, horrible, and should be excised from the film and replaced with something else in later incarnations of this film. Hopefully this is less than 1,000 words.