Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 3.0
...What was so great about this movie?
I am really really surprised at all these amazing reviews that this movie is getting, and am just baffled that the academy would nominate this for best movie. It's basically Braveheart with no plot, no interesting characters or plot twists, and even MORE historically inaccurate. The action scenes weren't as impressive either. I mean... this movie was GOOD, but nothing more. This movie had no dramatic effect, and I predicted the entire movie during the first ten minutes. The ending was boring, the scene where his wife and son died was stupid because you never even saw the characters before this took place, therefore how is it supposed to move you? And why the hell were there so many damn british accents in ancient Rome? The main character Maximus is not a great actor either, why he was nominated for best actor is just beyond me. Basically, there were only two good points about this movie -- The direction WAS good and impressive, but Ridley Scott just tries to make a movie good with needless violence which is why Hannibal was no good. The second good point was the action, there was a lot of it, but there just was no real EMOTION behind it like in Saving Private Ryan or Braveheart, so this movie really did nothing for me. To me it was just two or three hours of somewhat entertaining violent action sequences. If you want to see the movie that SHOULD win best picture this year, go out and see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.