Gladiator tells the story of a Roman general with an Australian accent who becomes a Hollywood gladiator and saves the Republic in one of the most idiotic conclusions since the third act of Starship Troopers III. The movie won a bunch of Oscars and everybody seems to think it's the greatest film ever made, but if you ask me, its big-deal stars and special effects can't save it from its brain-dead conclusion. Gladiator's a good movie -- sort of -- but the ending is pure crap and that tends to crapify the whole thing. It's semi-entertaining crap, however. I'll give it that much. Note: Spoilers.
Directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe as the general, Maximus; Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus; Richard Harris as the Stoic philosopher/emperor, Marcus Aurelius; Oliver Reed as a gladiator trainer with big ambitions; and Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Commodus' luscious sister, Gladiator is a big-budget summer epic blockbuster with enough scenery-chewing to feed a Roman legion and it's as historically accurate as a Marvel comic book, but it's a major extravaganza and it could have been a great movie with a different ending and some attention to historical detail.
The first two-thirds of the movie is marginally acceptable with good acting and effects -- provided you can ignore the quasi-Shakespearean dialog which is supposed to make everything seem more "classical" -- but the conclusion is pure Hollywood tripe and the writers should all be dragged to the top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome and thrown off the Tarpeian Rock for writing this steaming pile of melodramatic bull plop. The ending's a tear-jerker, though, so I guess most of the people who watch it are going to be too busy sobbing in their popcorn to notice how completely absurd it is.
Gladiator opens with a spectacular (though only vaguely accurate) battle scene in which Maximus defeats the last of the German tribes who have been standing in the way of the Pax Romana. The emperor, Marcus Aurelius, is on hand to witness the battle -- historically plausible since the real emperor wrote his Meditations while on campaigns -- and he decides (for some bizarre reason) to name Maximus his successor, charging him with restoring the long-dead Republic and "ending the corruption" in Rome, a monumental task to say the least. This wasn't a very bright move on Aurelius' part since it meant passing over Commodus, his son and legitimate heir -- just the kind of thing that tends to stir up trouble. And never mind the fact that "restoring the Republic" meant turning the Empire over to the Senate and nobility.
When he hears the news, Commodus flips out completely, strangles the old man in an outburst of tearful rage and orders his goons to kill Maximus and his entire family. Mrs. Maximus and son meet a grisly end at the hands of the Praetorian Guard (?in Spain?), but Maximus escapes, only to be taken prisoner and sold into slavery, landing in a gladiator school run by Oliver Reed, who complains at one point that a shifty-eyed Arab sold him a "queer giraffe," a jarring anachronism, to say the least. Anyway, to make a long story short, Maximus becomes a one-man killing machine, dispatching dozens of his fellow gladiators with every swing of his sword, etc., becoming a popular hero in the process. As a result, he's sent to Rome to fight in the Colosseum, where he ends up facing various tigers, chariot-riding Amazons and the Emperor himself, killing him eventually and croaking in the process, at which point Lucilla announces to the world (with a suitably stern expression) that "Rome shall be a Republic again."
Say what? A Republic? Why? Where did Lucilla, the emperor's sister, get the authority to "restore the Republic?" And why would anyone want to change their entire system of government just because the emperor was dumb enough to start a fight with Russell Crowe? I know it's just a movie and we're supposed to submit to a voluntary lobotomy every time we buy a ticket, but come on. This conclusion makes no sense at all. If a gladiator DID kill a Roman emperor in the arena -- in front of thousands of spectators, not to mention the Praetorian Guard -- it would set off a mass riot, not to mention a bloody power struggle, but never mind that. The conclusion was effective, I guess, if you're totally unconscious and prone to bursting into tears while your brain shorts out completely.
This reviewer's conclusion that Gladiator is "a true story" is seriously bizarre.
Now, don't get me wrong here. Gladiator is an excellent movie if you can just switch your brain off for a couple hours, something I find pretty easy to do these days, but its conclusion is so ridiculous that it's almost impossible to describe. As for its historical accuracy, forget about it. It would be a waste of time to go into all the details, but it's worth pointing out that all the stuff about Commodus murdering his father is just a lot of Hollywood BS. In the real world, Marcus Aurelius intended Commodus to be his successor all along. He made him Imperator in 176 AD and gave him the title Augustus the next year (when he was fifteen years old). Father and son ruled jointly until Aurelius died in 180. As emperor, Commodus was popular with the mob for staging and participating in gladiatorial combats, so that part of the movie is actually pretty accurate, strange as it may seem. The combats he took part in were carefully staged, however. There was never any danger of him getting injured, let alone killed.
All things considered, Gladiator's a great movie for what it is -- a Hollywood blockbuster with a lot of stilted dialog and a truly idiotic conclusion. It's a lot better than most of the crap being produced these days, but it's the kind of flick you watch in a trance and tend to forget about ten minutes after you leave the theater. The dirty secret here is that movies like this are a virtual substitute for the real gladiatorial games that used to be staged for the bloodthirsty mob back when people were more honest about their love of violence. Gladiator has lots of blood and howling crowds and heads rolling across the sand -- the real draw for modern "civilized" audiences (though nobody will admit it.) Two-thousand years ago, the Romans went to the games to watch animal hunts, executions and gladiator fights that rarely ended in death. Today, we watch people massacre each other on the Big Screen. I'm not trying to make a moral point, however. If Hollywood started producing REAL gladiatorial games, I'd probably go to see them. Until then, I'll have to settle for world-class schlock like Gladiator.
Note: This review was written in 2009. These days, I've been spoiled by fantastic historical dramas like HBO's Rome and find Gladiator completely unwatchable. The scene in Rome where Vorenus saves Titus Pullo in the arena is a thousand times more realistic than anything in Ridley Scott's "historical epic."
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