Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 3.0
Kubrick & Wyler Can Continue Sleeping RIP
Jim (husband) and I were expecting this to be as good or better than Kubrick's "Spartacus" or Wyler's "Ben-Hur" with all of the advance fanfare this film received. We also love director Ridley Scott's "Bladerunner" and expected that he was up to the task of taking on those two ground breaking films with his "Gladiator." Unfortunately, this is yet another film where everyone involved got so carried away with the special effects, blood, gore and mayhem, that the other elements of film making were given short shrift. Russell Crowe's talent, stunningly seen in "The Insider," comes across at only one level here, as a war machine. There is no real character development other than motivation given for his having nothing to lose by going all out as a Gladiator. Phoenix, however, does a nice dissipated villain and shows lots of promise for future roles. We were ready to give this DVD two stars and then watched the second disk on the DVD, the one with all of the special features. There was fascinating material on this disk about the "how to" of the movie and about the history of Rome and gladiators, which we really enjoyed. Hence the grade of three stars instead of two stars.