(The following is an addition written on 6/29/2001)
It's amazing what a little Academy Award can do to completely change one's mind about a movie. As you can see in the following original review, I though "Gladiator" was a decent movie. Not a great movie, not even an award worthy movie, but an OK action flick. But when I found out about all the Oscar Nominations the movie received, ESPECIALLY in the areas of Best Picture and Cinematography, my acceptance of the flick turned to intense and burning hatred. (I'm not emotion prone, am I. :::grins:::) As I point out in my original review, "Gladiator" was filmed digitally. As far as I know, it's the first major studio picture to have been done so. And it shows! Any scene where any object moves faster than say one mile per hour (this will include swung weapons, running people or animals, breathing!...) the image appears choppy, blurry, confusing. If you're computer knowledgeable, you'll understand when I say it looks like major frame-drop. Like they had to cut out every third frame in order to keep the movie going at 25 frames per second. This movie looks like the complete opposite of an IMAX film! The fact that a movie this...just-OK in plot, acting, script got not just Best Pic Nominated, but actually WON, is enough to make me sick. But for a movie this poor LOOKING in addition to that, well, my jaw hangs open in utter shock. "Epic" my...hinny.
The following was originally written...well, about a week after the movie opened in theaters.
As much as I like Roger Ebert and his reviews, I think he was a bit too harsh on this movie. Was it a great epic? Not even close, but it was a really good flick.
Here's the setup: A 2nd century Roman general, favored by the Emperor, is betrayed and left for dead by a certain power (and love) hungry individual. (You'll have to see it to understand that.) He's found by some unsavory types and sold to a gladiator broker in the Middle East (as gladiator battles were abolished in Rome by the previously mentioned Emperor.) Using vengeance as his reason for living, he rises to become a show-stopper, much to his chagrin.
Meanwhile in Rome, politics between the new Emperor and the Senate become strained, and the young Emperor decides to win the love of the people by bringing back the gladiators. Lo and behold, our hero returns to Rome for this reason, thus being given the opportunity for revenge. Blood and battles ensue, as well as strained and almost twisted family ties, until the final show-down between hero and villain.
The movie didn't seem as muted and somber in color and style as much as some reviewers thought, in my opinion. A lot of reds in the Roman army, some bright blues and greens and yellows in the Middle East. Greens in the fields and trees of the Spanish manor land, but the city of Rome did seem washed out. Very gray. I was reminded of how castles are portrayed in almost every fantasy movie as drab stone monsters of construction, when in actuality, many castle walls were painted and designed but we today can barely imagine that due to the years or wear and fading. Rome looked very much like a model of Rome, and seemed like it ended around each corner and at the end of the line of sight of each street.
The fight scenes were indeed violent, but were very choppy and distorted and quick and blurry, etc. To be honest, I'm not sure if it was intentional in order to show the "chaos of battle" and make the violence more easy to accept, or if it was side-effects of being filmed digitally. I can say that the digital filming was very annoying much of the time. If you haven't seen the movie yet but have seen the commercials, you can seen what I mean in the clip of Maximus avoiding the attack from a Tiger. It's jerky and grainy and just plain looked weird. When I saw the commercials I had thought it was just for the commercial. Nope; all the fight scenes are like that.
One might compare it to the jumpiness of "'Pvt.Ryan," but it doesn't work that way. " ' Pvt. Ryan" was filmed the way it was to give throughout the movie the impression of being there. It was a theme that was carried through. In "Gladiator," it was only during scenes that had any action and the I didn't get the sense that it was there to intentionally invoke a "being there" feel. I think it was simply because the digital equipment simply has a hard time capturing such quick action w/o a lot of frame drop and poor resolution.
The digital filming was also annoyingly apparent whenever blood splattered, or during the Roman version of a tickertape parade. The blood and the falling confetti simply looked like grainy black spots. Like damaged film actually.
But on the other hand, what I liked about the movie and found surprising, was that it had a little more depth that I anticipated. Commodus, played by Joaquin Phoenix was not your standard 2-dimensional power hungry villain. He had issues and weaknesses I didn't expect. At points, one could almost feel sorry for him. That is, if his issues weren't SO built up that it almost became tiring by the end. It had good potential.
I walked out of the movie feeling, interestingly enough, a great since of pride for Rome, as I believe was intended by the filmmakers. But it was a very odd feeling that just didn't seem to FEEL right. Richard Harris, as the aging noble Emperor even has a line "once there was a dream of Rome." I'm sure I'm not the only one to remember Richard Harris had said the same thing about Camelot in "Camelot?" The difference, is that Camelot was a fictional place that was worthy of being dream-like or inspirational. Rome however was real, and that right there makes "the dream of Rome" feel kinda funny compared to Camelot. Not to mention the fact that we all know Rome, while always corrupt and cruel to some degree, eventually fell to great ruin because of internal corruption that rotted the core and made it easy to ruin from the outside--it makes it hard to have a romantic feeling about such a place.
So, if you want to see a good action movie, it was good enough to barely get over it's poor filming. If you want a good history of Rome, buy Microsoft's Encarta or take a Western Civ' class because you're not going to get anything more about the history of Rome from this movie than enough to add color and a setting. However, and this is the biggest surprise for the type of movie it is, it does have a strong emotional component. I won't tell you why and ruin the effect of it, but this action loving reviewer teared up near the end pretty good due to Russel Crowe's fantastic underhanded portrayal. He is the one main reason to see this movie. You believe him as a Roman general. You believe him as a husband and father longing to return to his home in Spain. You believe his depression and you believe his strength of character. And you very much believe his hope and his own simple dream.
ADDENDUM: My feelings about Russel's performance also takes a major nosedive since his winning Best Actor Oscar. Compared to...well, every other nominated leading man, he was the least deserving.
Category: Movie
Genre: Historical
Date Reviewed: 2001-01-01
Pros:
Cons:
Rating: 4