I personally wouldn't have given it Best Picture, but it is a very fine, bravura motion picture

Rating: 8/10 (3 October 2010)

The opening scenes of "Gladiator" are a little stodgy. The movie, like many of its genre, commences with a big battle scene in which our hero, Maximum (Russell Crowe) sets fire to a forest while storming against the enemies of Rome. The scene opens up with predictable set-up dialogue and the following battle is rather unconvincing with a plethora of strobes and far too much blurred-up slow-motion. Frankly, I also just did not care for John Mathieson's cinematography in this scene or throughout the movie (I'll agree with Roger Ebert on that note).
However, after a rather uninteresting opening, "Gladiator" counterattacks with a lot of bravura and a lot of kinetic power. Ridley Scott, who has not disappointed me in the cinema yet, succeeded yet again here. He just had to come back from a lackluster opening.
Following the scene I just described, Scott takes us on a (partially-true) journey in which General Maximum is betrayed by the sudden heir to the throne of Italy (Joaquin Phoenix) who smothered his father (Richard Harris) and put the penalty for the crime on the general, whom Harris had originally intended to name successor to the throne. Rather primitive motives, but Scott whips through that rather quickly and moves onto a really enjoyable saga that seems, oddly enough, more like a remake of Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus" than of Maximus. He is captured by a slave trader (Oliver Reed) and trained to be a gladiator in the Coliseum. Phoenix wants to slay Maximus, but since the public goes for a tough gladiator, his only real method of doing so would be to pit him against tough opponents in the ring.
Every now and then I'm in for a good, old-fashioned adventure tale with a fairly familiar flow and a lot of technical virtuosity. All I require is that there be a competent creative artist sitting in the director's chair. And Ridley Scott, who immortalized himself with "Alien" in 1979, is most certainly one who fits those requirements. I think Scott realized early on in production that he did not the greatest of characterization in his screenplay and that the motives of all of the characters were primitive. It's a typical jealousy-revenge tale, so instead he proceeds to give it a lot of energy and zest. He presents us a lot of scenes in which Russell Crowe is clad in armor and forced to duke it out with other gladiators and sometimes dangerous beasts such as tigers.
I don't really have a whole lot to say about "Gladiator" because I said most of it when I wrote my review for "Spartacus," the picture that this one most reminds me of. That also being said, I think "Gladiator" is a very good movie, just as entertaining as the one I just mentioned, and well worth seeing. Although personally I would rather skip over that dull opening fight sequence and predictable setup dialogue and cut right to the chase. And I still think the cinematography by John Mathieson is phony-looking and ruins some of the intended historical atmosphere. But that's just me, measuring the pros and cons. The former outweight the latter.
I probably wouldn't have given it Best Picture, but "Gladiator" is a very fine historical epic with a lot of bravura showmanship and kinetic energy.