Great Special Effects, OK Movie.

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2001)

Gladiator is one of those movies where you just know what's going to happen next. After returning from war, Maximus (Russell Crowe) is to be given the crown as emperor of Rome, but instead is sent to be executed once the Emperor's son (Joaquin Phoenix) kills the emperor and takes it for himself. After escaping execution and winding up a slave and a gladiator, you just know how the movie is going to go. While the scenery and battle sequences are great, the predictability and general lack of caring about most of the characters makes this a rather unspectacular movie. Crowe does a decent, but not Oscar-worthy job of portraying Maximus while Phoenix does an equally decent job as portraying the evil, self-centered emperor Commodus. No one else in the cast is really given all that much for character depth and thus I never really cared about most of them. I give the movie 9/10 stars for the special effects and 7/10 for everything else, averaging an 8/10 for the movie.