Gladiator (2000) review

Dir. Ridley Scott

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is a film that is well-acted and directed, but an eyesore to look at for two and a half hours. The film’s effects are nice, which were awarded an Oscar in 2000, and so are the costumes, but they are all captured in a dirty, muddy tone. Most of the film is a dingy colored brown, appearing as if someone imbedded dirt in the camera lens.

The film’s plot is just a revenge story, soaked within a period piece. It involves General Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe), the leader of the Roman Army in AD 180. Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Harris) is very pleased with his latest victory, and grants him leadership, much to the dismay of the Emperor’s son, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). It isn’t long before Commodus is consumed with rage, and murders his father, claiming the throne as his.

Commodus puts out an order to the Praetorian men to kill Maximus’s wife and son. Before Maximus can return in time to stop them, they are killed. Being in a functioning state of depression, and after being kidnapped by slaves who teach him how to fight, Maximus finds out he has a knack for fighting and slaying people. So the plot is born. Maximus is a great gladiator, and continues to fight and murder, leading up to his appearance at the Roman Colosseum.

I’ve established that the film is long, which it is, but it is also fairly impotent. It’s slow, a bit dreary, yet well written in the sense that decent dialog is always recited. After a while, though, you begin to grow weary of the film’s hushed tone, and about five battle scenes later, the material begins to overstay its welcome.

The film is slowly paced, but it definitely has a grand appeal. Crowe’s performance is fantastic, and he brings life to a new action hero. For the brief time we see him, Richard Harris does a fantastic Emperor, and Joaquin Phoenix does an outstanding job playing a despicable, intolerable villain.

I also stated that the film’s costumes are nice, which they are, but after two hours they become sort of a chore to stare at. Some nice CGI is used, some scenes made up entirely of it, yet again, everything looks the same. Everything is mostly brown, green, and black, and very monotonous and harmful on the eyes.

Not to mention, no characters are really developed at all. The film is two and a half hours, and neglects to give us very many personal traits of the characters. This is the perfect case of style over substance; a movie trait I’ve run into far too much recently. To value style over substance is to put looks in front of every other concern, rather than efficiency and depth. John Logan, one of the three writers of this film, would give us so many character traits of Howard Hughes in The Aviator, four years later. It’s a shame that wasn’t put in the foreground rather than a loud score and heavy action sequences with this.

Gladiator isn’t perfect, but it’s a fairly memorable action flick, with some ups and downs. To me, this seems like a long B movie, with marvelous special effects and well known actors. It’s just a shame that in two and a half hours we have to listen to decent, yet sometimes, redundant dialog, trait-less characters, and stare into a vast field of brown. At least we get Oscar worthy performances to watch for the most part.

My review of Gladiator II

Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, Ralf Moeller, and Richard Harris. Directed by: Ridley Scott.