Gimme a break!

Rating: Null/10 (3 April 2001)

Gladiator is a corny shoot-em-up movie with a plot about as simplistic as Star Wars.....hence the Oscar for Best Picture. The special effects were good (not as good as those in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), but the story was just plain lacking; a man with some fighting skills has his family killed, is imprisoned, forced to fight, and eventually kills the source of it all in a thoughtlessly and simplisticly set-up battle in the end of the movie. I mean, what the hell was the emperor of Rome doing fighting a gladiator in a colosseum in the first place? Did the writers not know how to end the movie in a more clever manner? Stabbing Russel Crowe in the back with a knife didn't "cut it" for me, no pun intended. Gladiator was entertaining, and was certainly worth some form of an Oscar, but it was definitely not "Best Picture" material.