A Worthy Effort

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2000)

Gladiator, being a Ridley Scott film, has a wafer-thin story tarted up with a lot of arty photography and editing, and a barrelful of nifty special effects. (If Rome didn't look this way, it should have.) Again, because it is a Ridley Scott film, the wafer-thin story is a ripping yarn which trots along at a spanking pace. The movie's value as an historical document is probably dubious. Undoubtedly I will soon be backed into a corner by one of those twits who needs to inform me, in stentorian tones lest anyone in the county should miss one second of his tiresome display of erudition, just how inaccurate the film is. Historically inaccurate it may well be. It also lacks a decent cookie recipe. Since it isn't a documentary or a cookbook, neither of those two flaws is pertinent to its value as entertainment. Gladiator is a wildly entertaining two and a half hours of moviemaking, and I enjoyed I tremendously.
Make no mistake--the testosterone level in this film is very high. It is a manly film, with manly swords, manly male bonding, manly armor that puts Francis X. Bushman's millinery in the 1926 Ben Hur to shame, and a whole lot of manly men doing stuff that manly men just gotta do. At times it looks like "WWF Goes to Rome." Normally this kind of thing is a howling bore, but Gladiator's hormones never reach the point where they choke off the higher cerebral functions. It's all I ask for in a summer movie.
I have some quibbles. As a fan of the C.B. DeMille Sword & Sandal School of Epic-Making, I keenly felt the lack of the portentous beginning narration and the mid-film orgy, complete with dancing girls in peach chiffon and much wanton consumption of grapes. I was mollified by the film's conceit that the Romans spoke with a teddibly, teddibly British accent. Even Joaquin Phoenix gives it a good shot. The stalwart hero (Antipodean though he is) speaks in a decent, upstanding American accent. This is as it should be, and I applaud the decision to follow a time-honored tradition in epic filmmaking. Some things are just sacred, dammit.
Connie Nielson, who plays Lucilla, has nothing much to do except stay out of the way; she is beautiful in an unmemorable sort of way and is completely charisma-free. I'm sure she will have a busy and lucrative career working in the action genre, where she will be cast repeatedly in the secondary role of "Accessory," usually a wife who supports the hero through thick and thin despite his manifest lack of worth. No aging action star need ever be concerned about Miss Nielson upstaging him, as he would with an actress of more screen presence. Joaquin Phoenix gives a wonderful, slimy performance as the full-tilt batty Commodus, and the Merry Band of Gladiators perform their limited roles adeptly and with much attractive sweat. Djimon Hounsou does yeoman service in the important Woody Strode role. Oliver Reed gives the first--and last--understated performance of his career, and Richard Harris is. . .well. . .he's there. I'm happy to see Derek Jacobi in the cast (or indeed in any cast); no film about imperial Rome would be complete without Claudius.
Should you have somehow missed the significance of the film's advertising--and what rock have you been hiding under if you have--this film is Russell Crowe's show all the way, and what a show it is! Crowe has a physical presence that is reminiscent of Brando. He's displayed his technical chops in previous films; in Gladiator he proves that he is a STAR. (The fact that he looks darned good in a cocktail-length sheath is neither here nor there. Really.) To borrow from Elinor Glyn, Russell Crowe has "It" and I think this film will easily place him in the paid gadzillions, courted-by-politicians, tabloids-in-your-face category.
One caveat. Parents of young children, this film is called "Gladiator." It is not called "Fluffy Bunnies of Rome" or "Teletubbies of Antiquity." It has exactly what you would expect from a film called Gladiator: spouting blood, bouncing limbs, stabbings, impalings, beheadings, fire, war, pestilence, questionable fashion choices, and violent death both human and animal. Please, leave the kiddies at home.
Obviously, Gladiator is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. If it is, don't wait to see it on the small screen; it's a wide screen experience. The effects will be chopped up and cheesy-looking on television, and this will force you to pay close attention to the story. You'll want to avoid that. Rush right down to your local theater, and catch this puppy on the big screen. It's a "with butter" kind of film.