"I am Spartacus-I mean-Maximus!"

Rating: Null/10 (7 December 2005)

And Ridley Scott ain't Stanley Kubrick! Scott's sort-of remake of the modestly brilliant and richly emotional Spartacus and the horrendously bad Fall of the Roman Empire is a visually breathtaking epic that has almost no soul. I can't think of a reason to watch this movie other than to be entertained by three hours of close up violence, dazzling computer graphics, Russell Crowe's manliness, Connie Nielsen's loveliness, and Joaquim Phoenix's pree-versions.
Done with the movie? You've got nothing to show for it.
I don't worry too much about the myriad historical inaccuracies, such as the Roman Republic being reestablished at the end of Gladiator or Marcus Aurelius being murdered (if you have a clue about Roman history, you've just got to grin and bear it), but it's the reliance on the razzle-dazzle of the computer over the emotional depth of the characters that wears Gladiator down and leaves it bleeding in the center of the arena.
The opening battle in Germany is eye-popping (and stomach-turning) in its recreation of a fight between Crowe's legion and a pack of Teutonic mouth-breathers. You're supposed to be impressed and hooked, but then the internecine backstabbing, betraying, and incestuous hanky-pankying start and you're left waiting for the next trip into some North African arena where you can watch people get disemboweled in the same grainy fashion as in Saving Private Ryan.
It's all very appealing at a lizard-at-the-bottom-of-the-brain pan level (When I saw Gladiator in a theater in Ontario, Oregon, I heard a kid complaining, "When are we gonna see her (Nielsen) naked?"). Front-load the gore and the kink, dazzle the viewer with recreations of the Roman world, and you don't need to get past Russell Crowe's growling and Phoenix's fussy sickness.
Gladiator is emotionally empty. Stick with Kubrick's slave revolt.