HUGE let-down

Rating: 5/10 (23 September 2001)

Gladiator was a very very lucky movie, having been released in the awful year 2000 there is nothing in this mundane movie to fetch it 5 (!!) oscars.
Sure, Russell Crowe was very good, the casting and costume was great. The music was out of the world but the rest just fade in oblivion. The biggest disappointment for me was the poor character sketching. Where are the complex characters? Throughout the movie every character is just a good guy or the bad guy. Black or white. Where are the shades of grey? those mysterious characters that elevate drama to the next stage.
I would call this an average movie that has been over-rated because of the mediocrity that it surrounded itself with. Instead of Aussie Russell Crowe, watch his fellow A Mel Gibson in the classic "Braveheart" for a truly complex and heart-rending epic.
An average 5 (mostly for the music and technical wizardy)