Is this an authentic Scott at all???

Rating: 1/10 (25 September 2000)

Even if «Gladiator» weren't as weak and banal as it is on it's own right, the fact that it was supposedly done by the very same man who created «Blade Runner» and «Alien» would be enough to damn it in all eternity.
What an unbelievable loss of filmic quality! What a shamefully predictable plot! What quaint dialogues! What - even that! - poor videogamey visuals! All right: there's patricide, there's revenge, there's lotsa blood. There's even almost incest. But all oh so underscored and looked at in such awe and abomination that it can only be there to cater for a bourgeois (or adolescent, for that matter) need of a thrill, quickly followed by the reestablishment of order. Nothing more. No discussion, no actual leap into the dark. Nothing really unsettling, for the gods will eventually see to it.
Not worth one of Sigourney Weaver's gasps or of Harrison Ford's broken nails.
Whatever's the matter with Ridley Scott?? «Alien» shaped all our nightmares afterwards and the future was never the same after «Blade runner». And then, «Gladiator»... There's this very popular phenomenon of director's senility (just take a look at Coppola's «Jack» or Antonioni's «Jenseits der Wolken» for the sake of illustration). But then, R.S. isn't THAT old yet, is he...? Can't really fathom it.
Due to a very strange paradox, I doubt «Glads» would ever attract as much attention as it did, were it not done by the great author of «Alien» and «Blade Runner». Whoever would have enjoyed it anyway would enjoy it and forget it. More reasonable people wouldn't be seen dead in the theatre, not even gagged and handcuffed. For one thing, -I- would definitely not be wasting my time writing about it. But, again, justice must take its course.