Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 5.0
Elysian
If every DVD included the extras that this version of Gladiator contains, there would be at least one DVD player in every American household within 6 months. It's beautiful to see a package that puts it all together.As for the movie: There are a lot of flaws, but the upside is too far up to rate it lower than 5 stars. The main flaws are in the script, which includes far too many canned soliloquys and too much informational dialogue. Other problems crop up in the area of logistics (for instance, how did his hands get untied? isn't it illegal for a Roman citizen to be enslaved? etc.)But the numerous strokes of genius far outweigh these problems. For one thing, the movie utilizes "scenes from the collective consciousness" to great effect and give the movie a sense of dignified closure that I've never seen elsewhere. Stunning. Honest, my favorite scene in the movie is the brief opening shot of Maximus with his hand running through the wheat. Beautiful idea. The use of such visual tokens keep the emotional tension in the movie going until its perfect release at the end.Also very notable were the performances of Crowe & Phoenix. Crowe's facial expressions told more than most of the dialogue in the movie combined. Phoenix was incredible as a tormented, unloved, and even pitiable tyrant -- he was perfect in this role.