Big disappointment

Rating: 1/10 (24 August 2000)

My nephew, Matt (10 yrs old), summed up the picture very well when he said as we were leaving - "That Roman Emperor was REALLY whiney". There is a problem inherent to all gladiator movies - people come to see them for the fight sequences and not the plot. Not even Stanley Kubrick could surmount that problem (which, in reality, is a studio problem i.e. the grafting of studio morality, storytelling and themes onto a foreign stock). Thus we have a VERY long movie, full of fight sequences, and when there is no fighting there are certainly people trying to tell us about IMPORTANT themes that appear nowhere else in the story. Then there is that studio morality thing. Rome is not America. Neither is the conflict between Imperialists and Republicans one of freedom (both sides wanted slavery). And, in the end, what is the story about. Nothing but a pathetic and rather far-fetched Hollywood revenge fantasy.
I am a fan of director Ridley Scott. He does some wonderful things with candlelit scenes. The action scenes are fun (although the slo-mo/strobing gets tedious over the length of this piece). Also a delight (not to mention an in-joke) having Derek Jacobi. In toto, however, the film is a big disappointment.