Smells like epic spirit..

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2000)

(My review might contain spoiler) Gladiator wants so hard to be epic that it is beyond our common wannabees. (ie: The Matrix). The closest experience to watching Gladiator is watching a porno. The sub-plots are so lame and you are so let down by the lame, lame, lame, lame (why did I pay to get depress kind of) ending that you are always waiting for the 'action' to begin.
When you want to do a tragedy make it work, make us care about the main character.. Maximus was just too good, and Commodus was just too bad. You have to blur the good and the bad so we care about our good (slightly bad) hero. And how about that sub-plot of love (or was it?) between Maximus and the Emperor sister, it should have been developed.. and he should have escaped Rome and bring back the army too late to save his new lover.. QUIT IT ALREADY WHERE ROMEO ALWAYS HAS TO DIE. Juliette can die too, it would be less predictable sometime.. or even better they both live to see the next day.. no need for sweet thereafters. The main character had his share of tragedies, no need to make it a Voltaire rip-off.
War, I assume is some sort of hell, but your head is not shaking live a damn arkinson sick patient. Even the glorious fights and armies cannot make me forget that it's all a big hoax, half the military unit seen in the movie did not exist at the depicted time.. I am sorry, but I'd like to believe that when millions are spent on a movie, and with the constant rising of ticket price, the writers are spending some time to make sure of some chronoligical accuracy.
I give this movie 47% (5/10)
P.S. Was the emperor sister pretty or what?