Wonderful Movie about Rome

Rating: 8/10 (1 January 2001)

Based on the director and the cast, I was expecting a good action movie, great acting, and a derivative story about our times. As an action movie, it wasn't bad, but not as good as I'd hoped, the acting was fantastic all round (especially Joaquin Phoenix), but I was amazed and gratified that it was mostly a movie about *Roman* themes, not modern ones. It looks to me like the writer understood the Roman concept of Virtue, knew about Roman religion and Stoic philosophy, and Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations".
On the downside, there were a lot of minor anachronisms and inaccuracies:
1. Stirrups hadn't been invented yet. 2. The Romans used "Greek Fire", not Napalm, and they did not use it much as field artillery. 3. The Romans generally did not use cavalry as a decisive military arm in this period, and certainly not against the germans, who had more and better cavalry. 4. Did the Romans have tigers?! 5. If they did, the tigers would have had elementary big cat training. At one point a tiger decides to chew on Russell Crowe's armor instead of deliver the Killing Bite, or just break his neck with its paw.