Best Actor? Best Picture?

Rating: Null/10 (28 March 2001)

In viewing Russell Crowe's performance in Gladiator, I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's assessment of Kathryn Hepburn -- "she showed the entire range of emotions from A to B." Oddly, though, Crowe's flat, unemotional performance fits perfectly in this supposedly epic movie. Feature after feature fails to convince. The mock-up of the Coliseum looks like a toy model, Joaquin Phoenix as about the least compelling Roman emperor on film, the fight scenes are muddled, the historical basis for the movie almost laughable, and the emotional entor of the movie flat, flat, flat.
Not a bad movie, but certainly not a great one.