I knew Spartacus...you're no Spartacus

Rating: 5/10 (30 May 2000)

This is a good-looking movie. Let's get that out of the way. The character actors are very good (including Derek Jacobi, thrown in perhaps for associations with "I, Claudius"?). Crowe is good enough, although he isn't given a lot to work with, meaning he doesn't have very interesting lines. The Hans Zimmer score is predictably derivative: Holst, Orff and now Dead Can Dance -- things that go thump-thump-ahh-ahh. But the "atmospheric" style seems to be in vogue at the moment. It really interfered with my enjoyment, though. The historical accuracy was wildly varied: pedantic details of the manmade environment peeked out from wholly unrealistic scenes. You can hire consultants to reproduce period textiles, but not period sensibilities. The writer and director have to find those in reading some of the plentiful sources that have come down to us from Rome. I wonder how much time they devoted to hearing the voices of ancient Romans before staging their big computer crowd scenes. Spartacus took up some serious issues, even though it was quite corny. This is just a revenge tale with exquisite production values. 6/10