Gladiator Reviews

Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances, including the late Oliver Reed's swan song. The time is late in the second century A.D., and Roman general Maximus (Russell Crowe) is leading his armies to squelch rebellion in the conquered state of Germania. Maximus wants only to finish the job and return home to the wife and child he hasn't seen in three years, but the aging and infirm emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), to whom Maximus is devoted, has other plans. Convinced that imperial rule violates Rome's ideals, he asks Maximus to insure that after his death, power is handed back to the Roman senate. This plan sits badly with Marcus Aurelius's vain, spoiled son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who murders his father and seizes power for himself; when Maximus resists, Commodus orders his murder and that of his family. Maximus barely escapes his executioners; wounded and heartbroken, he's sold into slavery and bought by Proximo (Reed), whose trade in gladiatorial flesh was spoiled when Marcus Aurelius outlawed the games in Rome, relegating mortal combat to the far-flung provinces. Maximus proves an able and charismatic combatant, and after word reaches the boondocks that Commodus has restored daily gladiatorial games to the Colosseum, Proximo packs up his fighters and heads for Rome. Director Ridley Scott supplies bloodthirsty spectacle on an extraordinary scale in this muscular historical drama; that the movie's appeal is essentially that of a WWF smackdown in highbrow drag is worth noting, but not worth holding against it. Those who want their Roman history talky can always revisit the classic BBC miniseries I, CLAUDIUS (whose star, Derek Jacobi, appears here as a senator); Scott's epic vision of blood and sand is rousing, more character-oriented than it has to be, and ultimately as crowd-pleasing as Maximus himself.