director
Ridley
Scott
screenwriters
David Franzoni
John Logan
William Nicholson
story by
David Franzoni
producers
David Franzoni
Branko Lustig
Douglas Wick
cinematographer
John Mathieson
music
Lisa Gerrard
Hans Zimmer
editor
Pietro Scalia
cast
Russell Crowe (Maximus)
Joaquin Phoenix (Commodus)
Connie Nielsen (Lucilla)
Oliver Reed (Proximo)
Richard Harris (Marcus Aurelius)
Derek Jacobi (Gracchus)
Djimon Hounsou (Juba)
David Schofield (Falco)
David Hemmings (Cassius)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 155m
u.s.
release: 5/5/00
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other ridley
scott films
reviewed on this website:
- black
hawk down
- blade
runner
- g.i.
jane
- hannibal
|
Political
junkies may be amused by Gladiator, the burly and boring
new epic directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade
Runner). This, after all, is the story of a former warrior
who has a chance at ruling his land, until the spoiled son of
royalty brings him low. The film even features a noble senator
who wants to boot the son of royalty out of power. Read Gladiator
as the John McCain story and you might stay interested in it
for a while.
It's not often that a movie exists on several levels of rip-off.
Gladiator doesn't only remind you of earlier, better sword-and-sandal
sagas like Spartacus and Ben-Hur. When the hero,
the great Roman general Maximus (Russell Crowe), narrowly escapes
assassination and returns home to find his wife and son brutally
slain, you half expect mad Maximus to jump into a modified police
car and run down some Aussie motorcycle punks. And the hate-athon
between Maximus and Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the unworthy
blood heir to the throne of Caesar, has a distinct Ten Commandments
whiff about it: Maximus/Moses is the superior son that Caesar/Pharoah
wishes he had instead of getting stuck with Commodus/Rameses.
Critics have also compared the early battle sequence in Gladiator
to the early battle sequence in Saving
Private Ryan, with which any reasonable filmgoer must
beg to differ. The key difference is that, for all its jerky
camera movements and tricky frame-printing for a sped-up, strobe
effect, the Saving Private Ryan sequence was actually
possible to follow. Ridley Scott uses the same technique
-- he had actually used it before in his inept G.I.
Jane, so I can't say he's swiping from Spielberg -- but
the editing is so ferocious, the action filmed so close in, and
the lighting so punishingly dim, that you literally can't tell
what's going on. This also goes for the scenes inside the Coliseum,
when Maximus returns to Rome as a slave and gladiator bent on
vengeance. He kills lots of opponents, I guess -- who can tell?
You know you're not in for a subtle evening at the movies when
the hero is named Maximus, which sounds like a brand of condom.
Russell Crowe does his best to breathe life into this bronze
statue of a character, and it'll be a deep irony if, after years
of complex performances in box-office failures like L.A.
Confidential and The
Insider, this stoic beefcake role is the one that puts
him over the top. Joaquin Phoenix, by virtue of having fun with
his rotten Commodus and sharing the fun with us, skitters away
with the movie. When a movie hero is this opaque, one's interest
naturally shifts to the decadent villain and the actor enjoying
playing him.
Has Ridley Scott lost it? He proved in Thelma & Louise
that he can actually do people, and his upcoming Hannibal
may restore some of his reputation, but Gladiator is one
of the worst-looking movies ever made by a former visual genius.
The Coliseum, mostly created in a computer and populated by crowds
also created in a computer, is compelling proof that CGI
has a long way to go. Scott even uses CGI on poor Oliver Reed,
who died during filming; a stand-in with Reed's digitally mapped
face plays Reed's final scene. It looks okay, but subconsciously
there is still something off about it -- I couldn't focus on
a word the fake Reed was saying.
Gladiator marches grimly to its conclusion; three screenwriters
can't add much spice to this reheated beef stew. If a gladiator
film doesn't work as spectacle or as bloodthirsty action, what's
left? Drama? It's dead on that level, too, unless you haven't
seen Braveheart
or even Hamlet,
from which the climactic fight borrows. Gladiator is a
monument to meat-eating retro masculinity -- I can imagine the
guys on The Man Show raving about it -- but that's finally
all it is. It will be amusing, though, to listen to all the guys
talk about how much they loved Gladiator while avoiding
the uncomfortable subtext of why they loved it. |
