Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 2.0
Big Budget Bomb
I thought "Gladiator" was remarkably uncompelling. The much ado about its CGI effects only made everyone think virtually every scene was computer generated. The effects themselves look totally unreal and strangely prototypical, as if they hadn't quite figured it all out yet. And the DVD is reverently packaged like everyone involved was confident they'd made a masterpiece. They didn't. And the last shot of Russell Crowe walking toward his wife and son reminded me uncomfortably of that idiotic walk into the clouds at the end of another preposterous Roman epic,'The Robe.' Kubrick's 'Spartacus' is nearly 40 years old, but it's infinitely more advanced than 'Gladiator.'