Awesome Crowd Pleaser, for me though...

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2000)

This will make a lot of money. I'm telling that right now, it'll make a hell of a lot of money, and Dreamworks keeps hitting the jackpot with last year's success with American Beauty and this year, GLADIATOR.
Even though this will make LOTS of dough, I on the other hand was disappointed. There were all the ingredients to make a Best Picture film, but it didn't quite come close, in my opinion.
The film had Ridley Scott, first of all, one of the most influential film-makers of all time with films such as Blade Runner, Alien, or Thelma and Louise. Hans Zimmer was behind the music, who I consider to be THE GOD of film music. Then there were the actors who I thought all of them including Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Dijimon Honsou, Derek Jacobi, and many others, pulled off a wonderful job. Now, the problem was with the pace of the film. There were great action sequences, great dramatic cinematography, great sound, but the pace of transitions and each scenes to be the problem.
The pace of the film seemed to give almost a blockbuster-typish pace of fast-paced, moving camera with the music overtone between scenes which in many respects threw the film off. What's great about epics made by filmmakers such as David Lean or Francis Ford Coppola is that they have moments for the audience to take in what they have just seen and sometimes just enjoy a moment of silence, almost, by just staring into a great landscape or a character who was in despair or deep in thought or etc. The pace that was almost like Michael-Bay-type threw of the film for me, personally. Each sequences were so well done, that I don't think any of the audiences might have gotten bored by five or seven seconds of silence between some of the scenes. This was a very DIFFERENT film than the other Ridley Scotts in terms of the story telling and the work of the cameras in many of the scenes.
One problem I had with some of the visuals, which is usually hard to find in Ridley Scott films but there was anyway, was that many of the angles of the collusseum or the city of Rome or inside the CAESAR's palace, was that they seemed to close down the view. There seemed to be too many BIG master shots and then just CLOSE-UPS that there wasn't really any shots for the audience to look around at the people or the normal structures or objects that might have given the audience more of an open feeling, rather than just watching something that someone else shot for them to see.
Also, there was an awkward problem with the screenplay because of some of the dialogues, but mainly because of the ending. I will not include it in here since you might have not seen the film yet, but you might feel awkward as I did in the end.
Other than those, it was a GREAT crowd pleaser. Also, great images as usual like any other Ridley Scotts but somehow, very different. But anyway, I in someways liked the film, but I was disappointed to see a film that could have been SO MUCH better. ** 1/2 out of **** or a B/B+ rating.