Ridley Scott is back

Rating: 8/10 (23 July 2000)

There are several context to this movie: the art of war, the struggle for power in an impossibly large empire and the visual grandeur of the ancient Rome. Ridley Scott has put the emphasis on the visual and on the use of power and the use of the masses to sustain and control this power. Very clever, and "Gladiator" is an exceptionally powerful film, albeit a bit overlong and even slow at some points.
The visuals are fantastic, I couldn't really see anything that revealed the ancient Rome to be a model or a computer simulation. The war scene and the fighting scenes are amazing, my guess is that the brutality shown here is a bit meeker than what the real thing must have been - the Romans were the worst kind of barbarians, civilized and advanced and yet thirsty for blood. But then again, maybe that was Rome's way of keeping their enormous population in check? Give them spectacles, give them something to shout at, to focus their frustration and anger at - and be sure to point that away from the emperor's palace.
"Gladiator" goes to considerable lengths to show how a weak emperor loses control over the crowds and how his vision of the empire crumbles before his eyes - this is all very well portrayed.