Pointless gorefest

Rating: 2/10 (7 February 2005)

What we have here is a mixture of Ben Hur and Braveheart, and unsurprisingly it sucks.
The main objective of the film seems to be to cram as much gore as possible in the space of a single movie, without bothering about trivialities like story, character or meaning. If it purports to show the beastliness of staged human fights to the death it utterly fails because it only lowers the viewers to the same voyeuristic level as the Romans themselves.
Who cares about Maximus, a cardboard character with revenge as his only motivation? What to make of the crazy editing in the fight scenes that makes it impossible to understand what is going on? What with the bizarre geography and time lines? How to make sense of the opening battle which is claimed to be about a German settlement, yet takes place in the open and shows cavalry charging through a dense forest? Why the fake poetry of the hand in the wheat field? Who cares? Gore, gore and more gore, that is what sells tickets and, incredibly, delivers Oscars.
The only thing I could appreciate, contrary to many others here, is Joaquin Phoenix' portrayal of Commodus as he descends from mere creepiness into downright raving lunacy. Nice bit of acting. All the rest is a waste of perfectly good celluloid.