Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 5.0
Simply excellent.
I have to admit that when "Gladiator" won Best Picture at the Academy Awards I kind of wondered wheter or not it had enough epic quality or even film quality to deserve the award. The first time I saw it was several months earlier and I remember leaving thinking that it was a pretty good movie but without the notion that it would pick up any major awards. Then a few months after the Oscars I watched it again and I found that it left me with just a good feeling. Granted, all of the blood and guts marres that "good feeling" but the film ends really well and when looked at closely has a lot of substance. Several people have told me that "Traffic" was a much better movie and deserved the Oscar but while "Traffic" did have much more relavence to modern issues and was factually correct, it just didn't leave me with the right feeling for its genre. "Gladiator" is an enjoyable movie if you don't hold a cinematic grudge against it for being an "action" film.