Gladiator

sadly, i can only find time to publish articles i've written anyways, so this is my review of Gladiator

Now Gladiator is one of those films I wouldn’t imagine myself liking. Much like Troy and Kingdom of Heaven, and films in that nature, I can normally make a pretty sound judgment of its quality when I just read the premise. A Roman general in the Mid-Imperial period is caught on the wrong side of a political power struggle as the rightful emperor is disposed by his insane son. The general goes on to fight in the Coliseum as a Gladiator, and gets to kill the Emperor in a single combat duel (oh spoilers, the bad guy dies…..what did you expect), with plenty of fight scenes and blood along the way. And um, that is kinda all true. But while the film is a list of clichés, and plot holes, it has a certain charm that makes you look past that and see an actually good film, in the same way Pirates of the Caribbean was good for all of its Disney roots (and by that I mean the first one, before the fish people and the racial serotypes got involved). It was kinda stupid, but thoroughly enjoyable and had a certain charm to it. But enough of me talking about it, lets go into this film?

Gladiator follows the story of the Roman general Maximus, which roughly translates to “general awesome” who is serving under the last of the “5 Good Emperors” Marcus Aurelius (those of you who know Roman history will remember that everything is down hill from here). The general, who is Russell Crowe out in a battle in Germania (which is, for those of you who suffer from abrupt stupidity, modern Germany). And…ok, the first fight scene is awesome. Seriously, it is nothing short than epic. You know how in “Saving Private Ryan” the only part of the movie you actually care about is the first half hour invasion of D-day and everything after that is rather uninteresting? Well this isn’t that good, but it is close, and does the most important, it defines the period. Seeing that battle literally defines Rome, with ten minutes as the Romans prepare for war, and then this wonderful scene as the German hoards are just mechanically wore away by the stoic Roman military machine. And I have a page limit, so I’ll let you enjoy the awesome scene, anyways, Russel Crowe then goes on to talk to the Marcus Aurelius, who hopes to make Rome a Republic again, because apparently he suffers from historical inaccuracy, and hopes to have Russel Crowe take control until he can restore the Republic. Enter the Emperors nutty son, Commodus, played Joaquin Phoenix, who murders his father and take control of the Empire with the help of the Praetorian Guard (the personal body guard of the Emperor, infamously disloyal), and attempts to kill Russel Crowe, who is able to escape, but his family is murdered, then he becomes a Gladiator and ok, you know the rest. What the movie does to make up for it is in the telling. Russel Crowe has this great way of conveying the emotions of a remarkably static character type, but he is very good at making the character seem human. While he has the cliché stoic “I’m too cool to care” expression, he always seems very sad and forlorn within the role, adding a humoring element. For example, when he does the stereotypical “are you not entertained” shaming the mob speech, instead of doing the whole “grr, I’m macho and have no emotions” he comes off instead as a depressed and broken man who is ashamed of his own impotency. And Commodus is great as well, taking an incompetent and, quite frankly, unbelievably stupid historical figure and making him into a chilling, cunning, manipulative egotist, who is still rather sympathetic. However, the standard plot love interest, whose utterly forgettable name and actor I don’t care to write down ruin most of his scenes, as his heavy acting doesn’t mesh well with her…lack of acting, thus ruining all of her scenes.

But the greatest aspect of the movie I think is just the fact that, while it is a standard action film, it is very well thought out. The setting speaks for itself, I mean it is ancient Rome, but unlike some movies, they don’t totally abuse the awesome background but take advantage of it. In the microcosm of this story, you catch the hints of the macrocosms of the whole empire (you’ve taken 10^th grade English, you know what these mean). The republic stands for good ideals, but dies because both its own internal corruption, and the fact that the common people want an Emperor. Rome is ruled by the mob, and by the Praetorian swords, it is the apathy and bloodlust that ruined the empire, and finally the people’s inability to realize that they are in a despotic dictatorship. Also, while there are glaring a historical inaccuracy, the story has a sort of historical parallel. Commodus did not die in a single combat duel obviously, but he did fight in the arena and was killed by a gladiator (through it was an assassination). The movie is full of historical references and shout outs that are rather hard to catch, but give the imprisons that the director really cares, especially in the details, like Russel’s family gods that he keeps close to him. Also, I like how the villain just keeps beating the main characters no matter what happens, ending aside.

Now, my biggest beef is the action. First scene aside, most of the fights hast great set ups, but littler follow through. The camera cuts so fast that the fights come off as disjointed and inconsistent at times, first one being the exception, and it is hard to tell once action from the next, character’s placement changes from shot to shot, and it feels like they are skipping events in the cutting. I’d rather just see the guys fight each other for a minute or second on camera rather than just cutting from odd angle to odd angle then one guy falling over dead. Take the fight with Gaul’s champion, you never actually see them sword fight, you see one of them parry a weapon, then cut to a different angle of Russel Crowe falling down, then another cut and he is standing up, then he wins.

Anyways so in short, it’s not a great movie, nor mind-blowing. But it tells a good story, does good credit to the source material, nice characters and most importantly tells the moral of Rome, a society, very much like ours (disturbingly so, I mean, they have Gladiators, we have celebrities). It never becomes a truly great film, but it is good and entertaining. I feel like if it was made by Italians it would be more interesting, cause the characters would be more corrupt and multi dimensional, but most of the actors can make up for there stock roles with fine acting. In short, a solid B minus, if I had to give an arbitrary grade to it.

from

EE