Great epic - Great film

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2000)

What a great film!
Ridley Scott of `Alien', `Blade Runner', and `Legend' fame has delivered a wonderful and moving film.
The opening battle scenes between the Roman Legions and the barbarian hordes in Gaul were equivalent to the opening scene in `Saving Private Ryan' and the brutal attack in `Paths of Glory'. Absolute reality  cold, miserable, dirty, dangerous, vicious, - but organized and executed with Roman efficiency and uncompromising courage. I felt I was there and I really didn't want to be there.
Russell Crowe is terrific. The movie Hero with Charisma is back. He is the link that ties the movie together and there are no false steps. No over or under acting  just a performance that makes you believe that Maximus existed and had to do what had to be done.
Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius should get a Oscar nomination for his performance.
Jacquin Phoenix is the psychotic Emperor Commodus and proves the maxim that a great movie with a larger than life hero always needs a great villain.
While the special effects were exciting and important, I didn't think that they dominated the movie or accounted for its success. I give the credit to old fashioned directing, great screen play, wonderful music and cinematography, great sets, editing, and fine acting.
The Games
`Spartacus' was about the training and the revolt of gladiators. `The Gladiator' centers on what it would be like to actually participate as a gladiator in the `Games'. For about seven hundred years  from the Etruscans to the fall of Rome  the Games bound the Roman culture together. On a weekly schedule throughout the Empire - tens, hundreds, and thousands died to entertain the populace. Ridley Scott presents the Games as simply part of the Roman life  no moralizing, no cute scenes, no Christians, - just its brutality and its vicious, addicting, emotional appeal.
Gritty, tough, epic in scope and very moving.