Gladiator-- two stars out of five
Ridley Scott decides that a straight revenge flick isn't "big" enough or grand enough for him. So upon the very serviceable revenge-plot, Scott stacks a lot of talkie plot about "restoring Rome to the people" and reversing the decay of the Roman character.
How?
It's very vague, but somehow the plan seems to involve breaking out a slave gladiator (Crowe) and reuniting him with the armies he formerly commanded. So he can begin a civil war and kill the evil, queeny Emperor (Joaquim Pheonix).
None of this works. It's all quite silly, and it's all a violation of the basic principle of "show, don't tell." The film obviously can't spend too much time on this silly side-plot, so it's all given to us by Yap-Yap characters yap-yapping at each other.
Meanwhile, Rome looks pretty much the same as it does in Age of Empires II: The Rise of the Romans (in other words, much like a competent, but not breathtaking, video-game simulation), except with lots of unnaturally grey skies.
The Gladiator fights are pretty lame. And there are only three of them. Maximus becomes a cult figure, and presumptive "Savior of Rome," because he wins three (or maybe four) lame gladiator bouts.
Christ. If it were so easy, Mike Tyson would be king of the world five or six times over.
Oh yeah: Ends with the dumbest "climax" imaginable, just as I feared. What is it? Well, take a guess: Think of the dumbest possible way to end this movie, and that's the way it ends.
The only thing good in this film are the performances, which are range from pretty good (Crowe) to predictably decent (Harris) to quite good (Phoenix). Plus, there's a cute little boy who's a good actor too.
Very, very missable. An "Event Film" lacking any events.
By the way:
In numerous aspects, the film is a fairly blantant rip-off of Braveheart, except that Gladiator chooses to eschew Braveheart's
-- winning sense of humor;
-- viscerally thrilling battle sequences;
-- engaging characters and straight-ahead, go-for-the-throat plotting;
-- sense of wonder;
-- sense of convincing time and place;
-- and magical, gorgeous cinematography, choosing instead to reject the beauty which God Hath Wrought in favor of mega-processed, mega-altered filmic effects and CGI.
Ridley Scott once again reminds the world that's he's the man who brought us 1492, White Squall, and Blade Runner, just when we were all willing to forgive and forget.
