Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 3.0
Great entertainment of no educational value
If you want to be entertained, watch this movie. If you want to be educated, avoid it like the plague. Whichever academic produced the research for this film should be shot for incompetence. When the Roman general, at the start of the conflict, shouted out 'Roma Victor' instead of the grammatically correct 'Roma Victrix', I knew I was in for a long haul. Whoever heard of anyone being called 'Proximo' ? And how did Maximus get from Germany to Spain so quickly ? The Occidental Express ? The actual gladiatorial scenes were well organised and thought out. It will not escape the viewer that the film is virtually a crib of 'The Fall of the Roman Empire'. For Russell Crowe supply Stephen Boyd, for Joaquin Phoenix supply Christopher Plummer, for Richard Harris supply Alec Guinness, for Connie Nielsen supply Sophia Loren. Add James Mason to this illustrious group and you have people who can act instead of people who 'go over the top'. Phoenix looked no more like Commodus than Jay Robinson like Caligula in 'Demetrius and the Galadiators (the movie, not the pop-group), both of them overacting. Of all the films involving gladiators, Spartacus is still the best. If people aren't convinced by Kirk Douglas, they will be less convinced by Russell Crowe who, whether he plays Maximus or John Nash, is still Russell Crowe.