Gladiator fought its way to 5 Oscars

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2001)

Russell Crowe plays Maximus Decimus Meridius who becomes the general, then becomes a slave and after that he becomes a gladiator.He goes fighting to Colosseum in Rome.Maximus wants to have his revenge to Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) for the murder of his wife and son.The great Richard Harris plays Marcus Aurelius, an aging Caesar.Connie Nielsen is beautiful Lucilla.Djimon Hounsou does a great job playing an African slave called Juba.Proximo is played by Oliver Reed who sadly passed away during filming back in 1999 at the age of 61.Ridley Scott's Gladiator from 2000 is an amazing epic story with superb cast.Last night at the 73rd annual academy awards Gladiator won five Oscars.It was nominated in 12 categories.It was the best picture of the year.Other nominees in this category were Chocolat; Grouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Erin Brockovich and Traffic.Russell Crowe won the best actor award.Actors that lost to Russell were:Javier Bardem; Tom Hanks; Ed Harris and Geoffrey Rush.It also won the awards in the following categories: best costume design; best sound and best effects-visual effects.This movie was worth every Oscars.Russell Crowe was excellent as Maximus.This Australian actor was just the right guy to play the part.Joaquin Phoenix was amazing playing Commodus.He was nominated for Oscar in the category of best supporting actor but it was Benicio Del Toro from Traffic who won it.Joaquin would have deserved it.Both of these men are becoming number one actors in Hollywood.The music in this movie is just perfect.Hans Zimmer made the music for this movie and he was nominated for best music-original score but didn't win the award.Everything works perfectly in this movie.The action scenes are amazing.The dialogue is brilliant.There are many memorable scenes in Gladiator.You can't get bored with this great movie.I recommend Gladiator for everybody who knows the meaning of a good movie.