Mediocrity - How Ridley Scott yet again neglects the script in favour of the image

Rating: 1/10 (21 May 2000)

It wasn't surprising really. I should have known better, after all this had happened with the narratives in Legend, 1492.., Black Rain and even in his superior works Alien and Blade Runner(and will happen again, like Peter Pan?). Hope however springs eternal, and with the casting of Derick Jacobi some comparisons with the sublime I, Claudius were inevitably and subconsciously drawn. How desperately in need of those comparisons was this dire cocktail of flashy, confusing gore and risible 'intrigue' performed by a collection of actors who, with a few exceptions, appeared to have recourse to one facial expression to express the gamut of emotions required of them by an infantile, ludicrous and totally implausible script which took 2 1/2 hours to deliver a plot which could have been written on the back of a postage stamp.
Are we so easily satisfied with mediocrity that we can praise this ramshackle, gloomy hi-tech affair as being the first 'epic' of the year 2000? Surely not. Even the highpoints of the film; the opening battle scenes and the chariots vs gladiators coliseum fight come nowhere near to matching the virtuoso displays in Saving Private Ryan and Spartacus.
For the rest, give me a script instead of computer-generated images which if I want to watch I can do so on one of my son's computer games.
Now if Mr Jacobi had been a screenwriter ...