Way too drawn out

Rating: 2/10 (8 May 2000)

Gladiator was a severe disappointment to me. Firstly, it was too long, at least 45 minutes too long; 2h45m total. But length alone doesn't make a movie seem long. In fact, some movies that are very long don't seem very long at all, such as the Lawrence of Arabia, the Godfather movies and Braveheart, all riveting throughout. No, Gladiator's problem was that it was obviously going for the look and feel of an epic. It got the look just right. No question, this movie looked fantastic; can't possibly give an argument there. Unfortunately, the film didn't have enough story for an epic. Solution? To have long stretches of dialogue and to have long pauses between each line of dialogue which, by the way, was very, very bad. The acting, therefore, was understandably average as no actor could possibly seem that convincing behind such overblown dialogue.