Big and very exciting, but ...

Rating: Null/10 (7 January 2001)

This movie has lots to admire and little to like. Its many plusses  spectacle, beautiful photography, action galore, superb effects  create only sporadic involvement. Its popularity may be based on the fact that its defects are overwhelmed by its vast scope. But look behind the on-screen uproar: the hero is an empty symbol, the linear story goes straight as an arrow from event to event, and the tiny amount of real feeling (other than excitement) is introduced artificially. The music seems to belong with another film. Russell Crowe, as the gladiator, is more stolid than heroic. Acting honors go to Joaquin Phoenix as the evil Emperor Commodus. (Accent on the first syllable.) At the climax, the script soars completely out of control, creating the movie's single authentic surprise. The emperor, a deranged weakling, ensuring that he holds every conceivable unfair advantage, pits himself in the arena against Rome's greatest gladiator. Even the delusions of the real Commodus weren't quite that insane, and the vision of Phoenix vs Crowe in the Coliseum is outright ludicrous. Perhaps it isn't possible to make a epic of this scale that can create any emotion beyond a feeling of awe. Possibly many of the defects are in the genre, not in the movie itself. But by all means see it, revel in the spectacular images, and don't think about it too intensely.