Disappoint Much? Contans Spoilers

Rating: 1/10 (15 May 2000)

I thought that overall the movie wasn't very good. I did think Russell Crowe was pretty good, but the rest of the cast was unimpressive. I disagree with some readers that the movie was action filled. The action was short and was frequently dispersed with lengthy talking/dramatic scenes that tried to add to the intrigue and tension but failed. It seemed to me that the movie originally had some scenes that would have helped the flow and were cut out or something. Also, some of the characters were so inconsistent for example, Quintus, (Maximus' second in command [I think]) was his friend in one scene, betraying him in the next, and helped him in the end...what was that? Also, on the battle at the start...they really messed it up. I don't want to sound like a dork but ROMANS DIDN'T USE FIRE ARROWS or any arrows at all for that matter. The Roman army was composed almost entirely infantry. They only used bows when they had cheap auxiliary troops from a territory or something. Remember the spears the infantry had? The thin metal ones? THAT is what they would have used, you see, they THREW those if they had used those spears in hand to hand, they would've gotten wasted hardcore. A weird thing about that is, the cavalry had swords only, now tell me the sense of fighting from horseback with a Roman short sword. They would've used lances. A final argument to that scene is, they wouldn't have brought and set up those siege weapons for an infantry fight. They simply took too long to set up and fired too slowly to be useful. One the other hand, it was kind of cool to see and I thought the production values, as far as the armor and mass amounts of troops were cool. They were entertaining, but they weren't very well researched. Another thing that bothered me was I felt the camera actions throughout the movie kinda spoiled it. The camera was jerky and the speed of it was constantly altered ad nauseum They should've taken some hints from other epic war movies and movies with that sort of action.
My final thought is, the movie could've been a lot better, but it's worth watching once. Also, there is NO WAY it equals Braveheart in ANY respect.