Uglier than any pessimist could expect

Rating: 1/10 (23 January 2002)

Let's forget "Gladiator" won the Oscar for the best film: even worse things may happen. As a matter of fact, the movie contains uncountable mistakes and flaws on Roman history and ancient life in general. Some examples follow.

The gladiators were almost NEVER killed in the arena. That's clear: they were too important for the show business, and it costed too much money to train a gladiator to have him murdered. Their fights followed strict rules, nothing to do with the absurd slaughters shown in the movie.

A Roman Citizen by no means could be made slave, as it happens to Maximus in the movie. If sentenced by the Emperor, he could be killed by anybody, but neither made slave nor tortured. That's the reason why Saint Paul was be-headed and not crucified. And the fact that Maximus uses his long sword (Romans had no long swords) with two hands in a Samurai-like style is just too ridiculous to deserve comments.
The Roman army in battle followed a scientific strategy, with tight lines of troops protected by their shields, an established sequence of attacks and retreats, and so on. The battle at the beginning of the movie is an over-confused, poorly photographed brawl. The camp of the Roman Legion was a perfect square, with a strong palisade, and the tents of all ranks were neatly divided inside it. Nothing to do with the messy camping in the forest shown in the film.
"Gladiator" won an Oscar for the best costumes, too. Well, I think that Oakland Raiders fans wear nicer and more realistic costumes. In particular, the armours and weapons in the movie are unbelievably mistaken: most of them first appeared some 800 years later than the epoch of the story.
But let's forget about Roman History, and say that "Gladiator" is either fantasy, or science-fiction, or something like that. Nonetheless, it remains a very ugly movie. The story is boring and utterly predictable. For instance, the whole episode of Maximus' attempted escape can be fore-seen almost second by second. Maximus returns home and finds his house wasted and his family destroyed... a strikingly original idea... perhaps already seen in dozens of western movies! By the way, Maximus goes from Germany to southern Spain (say 1500 miles?), pursued, with no food. How long did this pleasant journey last? Two months? And what about the gangrenous wound, later healed by a fellow gladiator? Come on! And the repeated wanna-be-touching oneiric scene with the hand and the wheat is clumsy and far-fetched.
The action scenes are confused and badly filmed. The violence is so excessive to become ridiculous. The script is awful. The cinematography is generally very poor. Large use of close-ups like in a TV-movie, extremely brief choral scenes. Why? Perhaps in order that the viewer doesn't notice the computer tricks? The fight which closes the movie is by far less spectacular than all other arena scenes: I think this is an enormous mistake for an action flick.
Something to save in "Gladiator"? The bucks it has made.