Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 2.0
Arch, adolescent camp
I kept waiting for this movie to get better. Alas. Each chunky scene in this self-conscious, overweight "virtual" spectacle just sort of drops out of the sky, connected by only the thinnest conceit, to what precedes it and what comes after. There's a feeling after a very short while into the film, that it might never end. The screenplay, its characters, the actors who portray them are entirely gratuitous, and serve no purpose than to justify the choreographed violence that takes up two thirds of this very long film. This is a movie that Ridley Scott made because he could, not because he should. The whole thing seems designed merely to show off the (art) director's flamboyant, and shamelessly artificial vision of a high-tech antiquity. The plot is nonsense. Why is our hero allowed to live past the first thirty minutes of this movie, for example? The digitalized cinematography is gaudy and overwrought. The actors are boring and the dialog is stiff where it's not plain cheesy. I bought this movie. I don't recommend even renting it.