A real hit,but not a true story

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2007)

This movie was a real hit in 2000. I can remember that in Romania, everybody was talking about " Gladiator". This was the first movie where Russell Crowe made a good impression for me (of course,at that time I didn't know that he acted in "The Insider"). The only fact I dislike is that the story presented in the movie it is not real, even if the movie is considered to be an historical one. There are some facts that really annoyed me: the battle presented in the beginning of the film takes place in Germania,but a country with this name didn't exist. "Germania" presented in the movie was a land of barbarians,not a kingdom or empire. Maximus has to fight with some tigers in a scene, but in the ancient Rome, only the prisoners used to fight against wild animals, the gladiators were fighting only with other gladiators. Even if the story is not true , the remains a real masterpiece.