Ben Hur Lite

Rating: 3/10 (16 July 2001)

Gladiator is an infuriating movie, an immensely overrated Ben Hur light that is clearly a graduate of the Armageddon school of filmmaking. Nevertheless, it does some things very well. And this is the problem perhaps. The combat sequences are a sight to behold, as exhilarating in their beautiful bloodshed as anything Ridley Scott has ever done (and he is the American master of beautiful bloodshed). But the drama that connects these sequences seem only filler, existing only to move us (sometimes in a most incoherent way geographically speaking) to the next moment Russell Crowe gets to bear his teeth and fight another battle.
But how is this a good movie? If anything Gladiator is more of a punched up, swords a blazing series of dance numbers. The drama rests on the shoulders of a one note performance by Russell Crowe, whose core emotion seems to be one of grimace and pout. He is a character who has one desire and one desire only: revenge. Many critics loved the intensity of the performance but why? A complex, interesting character should have complexity to them. But this character has no complexity, no range of emotions: he is a Stallone character trapped in an art film.
Joaquim Phoenix, on the other hand, was a delight, an over the top sociopath who brings a few precious moments of levity to an otherwise drab, ugly, and humorless film.