Mel Gibson saves another bad movie.

Rating: 5/10 (20 July 2000)

If anyone but Mel Gibson made this movie, it might have been universally hailed as a needlessly violent, predictable epic. Nothing about the story should surprise anyone. Fortunately, Gibson and his co-stars make this lame bloodbath of a movie watchable. The strength of this movie is its characters. They seem grounded in their times, but we can still relate to them. But this film does suffer from a cookie-cutter story that could have been written by a high school sophomore studying the American Revolution in his or her history class. Nothing particularly interesting happens except a lot of killing. I mean a LOT of killing. As for the point of the movie...I couldn't see one. Unless your a Gibson fan, don't waste your time. Go see GLADIATOR again.