Gratuitous, boring and overlong

Rating: 7/10 (29 August 2000)

I like Roman stuff, I like action films, I like historical films.
I didn't like this film. It started well with a battle both dramatic and accurate. It then started to drift with the appearance of the hammed up Commodus. We then enter fabtasyland for a short while while Maximus rides from Germany to Spain and is then captured by slavers in the middle of civilised Rome and taken to Morocco. mmm.
Proximo is a great character played by Oliver Reed, but then we get to a series of difficult to appreciate gladiatorial combats that frankly had little entertainment value and were gratuitous.
Not that they were't authentic, just that they had little cinematic value.
The film then drags on for ages and eventually the almost Goth-punk Emperor fights Maximus in the arena and is killed. ho hum, I was begging for the film to end by now..
Now why should this film, which is quite authentic, not implausible and both modern and Roman in morality, be disliked by me so much?
I can only echo Ebert that the film is dark, dull, morbid and has no flair. I watched Spartacus on the TV last night, and that is a much better film.
Watch that and see what you think.