a spoiler?

Rating: Null/10 (20 May 2000)

Don't get me wrong, this movie is outstanding of its kind, and should be ranked with Ben-Hur and Spartacus. However, there was something not completely satisfying about this movie. I think I've put my finger on how I feel about it. It was cold, not entirely human. Partly this is due to the characters. Maximus, the good guy, is not exactly the life of the party. Commodus, the bad guy, is a much more interesting character (and was awesomely portrayed by Phoenix), but in the end is too troubled and evil to be appealing. All of the characters are either in trouble or troubled, and the lengthy story has to move along at such a speed that each scene has to show one of these troubled, humorless characters making a decision or moving the plot along in some way. That is, the characters are mechanisms to move the plot along (and the plot itself is a mechanism to show off the awesome spectacle of the movie itself), and none of them wind up being very appealing, or very human. Which is why I think Spartacus is probably the better movie in the genre. In that movie the humanity of the characters was central to the plot. They were not machines.