The Tigers are cool, but...

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2000)

I give the movie 4 out of 10.
The script is awfully lame: there are almost no lines that are not predictable, and there are several subplots that do not come from or do not go to anywhere. E.g., we never learn how Maximus, who is supposed to be a farmer, knew the emperor a dozens of years before the movie takes place -- is this just to plant the prequel?
The acting is very uneven: Joaquin Phoenix gives depth to Commodus, Russell Crowe is very good, he almost manages to pull together the movie, but the other roles are terribly underwritten but overplayed.
As for the filming: I don't know which gladiator movies "Gladiator" is supposed to be an hommage to, but the scene where Commodus and Lucilla enter Rome in the chariot made me feel very eerie -- they alluded, strongly, to the Nazi parade pictures from the late 30's or, for that matter, Leni Riefenstahl's film on the Berlin Olympics. Tell me it was not on purpose!
The major problem, however, is the historical accuracy, or, to be precise, the lack thereof. I'm not talking about Maximus being a fictional character, Commodus having reigned 12 years or so, and other licentia poetica here. I'm talking about the way Roman religion and weaponry was depicted.
As for the latter, the Roman Legions looked like medieval professional soldiers, but who cares? The religious beliefs attributed to Maximus, however, are absolutely false for the period and for the character. A Roman to believe in the "Afterlife"? A Roman to pray "for somebody", aloud? A Roman to kneel down while praying? Anybody who took a 101 Classics class knows that Romans did not include portraits/statuettes of their loved ones, alive or dead, in their home altars. One might think that Christianity is penetrating the good old Roman religion here -- but why is then Maximus not a Christian hero? Unfortunately, all his character (farmer, pater familias, great soldier; honest and just) is consistently taken from the Republican idealizations of a Roman hero. This is not a Christian hero. Somebody just didn't do their homeworks on the background checks on Roman Antiquities.
Plot and acting credits taken away, "Gladiator" might still be good entertaiment -- but, it seems to me, only the fight scenes are there to go for. And the music, of course, the only really epic thing in this flic.