Exciting entertainment, but not much more

Rating: 6/10 (29 May 2000)

The first thing I want to say is that the film was far better than I expected. The fighting scenes were good, the acting too, and the special effects were just amazing... I was really impressed how the film showed the ancient Rome , a great work of the special effect crew.
But the story was just the same old thing. Bad man cheats good man and becomes king (in this case: emperor) , and good man fights for justice against the bad man although he's inferior. Well, you can also find that in Shakespeare's pieces, so this is certainly nothing new. And because the characters were all in all clichees, this is not shown very good either. Another point: the film is, historically seen, not correct: Rome never became a republic again, and Commodus reigned until 191 AD. And he was certainly not killed in the arena... The last point: Maximus is quite a stupid name, it just means "the greatest", and romans didn't name their children like that... well, these are all just unimportant details... 6/10