Positive Comments on a great film!

Rating: 10/10 (20 July 2000)

When movies of gladiators and Ancient Rome are made, they are either very good....or very bad. Thankfully, this is a very good movie. Russell Crowe (as Maximus) epitomizes the macho, testosterone-pumping tough guy, and turns in an Oscar-caliber performance. The fighting scenes are done masterfully, but of course they are extremely graphic.
While the movie is historically accurate to a T, two flaws bother this Latin student. One- Marcus Aurelius was not strangled by his son Commodus; he caught a bad cold while going on a trip to the area which is now Vienna and died. The other mistake, involves the thumbs up/thumbs down policy in the arena. When a gladiator was chosen to be killed, the audience raised their thumbs down, not up.
Overall, the movie may have some minor flaws in the dialogue, but I believe that the movie's intention was to show a hero, one who faced adversity and death with little fear. Alas, why can't the world have more Maximuses, people who value hard work and little apathy?