Gladiator rocks my socks

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2005)

For fear of somehow being misunderstood, I wanted to make something quite clear before I get started: this movie is awesome.
Yes this movie has spectacular special effects, yes this movie has amazing battle sequences, and yes this movie has a riveting soundtrack. But that's only the beginning of how incredible this movie is. The problem is that most historical epics would be happy to stop at that and be like "oh, well at least he's wearing sandals and we have cool fight scenes." Nuh uh not here.
Gladiator features an amazing cast. Joaquin Phoenix is incredible as Commodus, and makes a fairly obscure historical figure very 3 dimensional: Commodus is one of the greatest baddies in recent memory. Richard Harris is outstanding as Marcus Aurelius, and everybody else does a great job as well. Last but not least, is Russell Crowe. This guy can act. And what is amazing is that he's awesome in this movie but he's even better in other movies. He's not just a one note guy. He's such a good actor that he can say scarcely anything for about 20 minutes in a movie and still get people to understand what he's doing/thinking (as there is a point in this movie which is similar).
The script is also excellent. As far as sword and sandals epics go, most are content with articulate set pieces and large scale battle scenes (huzzah!) but lack sorely in a decent screenplay soaked with character development (hissss...) Gladiator is not this way. Instead of merely trying to work around battle scenes and try to uncover a plot, it works the other way around, and the battle sequences must work around the story line. So not only is Gladiator an able action flick, but it is also an ancient political thriller.
Now that I've got that out of the way, let me go back to the battle scenes, because they are just amazing. A combined effort of superb editing, heart-pounding musical cues, and great cinematography create several amazing sequences. Especially the scenes in the Colossium. I still sit there and think "holy crap, how did they do that?" Any movie lover should watch Gladiator. There is a reason it won 5 academy awards. It's not just a testosterone-pumped action flick, but a quite intelligent story and does not insult your mind.