Gladiator

Gladiator made a pretty noticeable impact on cinema when it was released in the year, 2000. Motion picture epics were a very popular genre of movie for the medium for as long as its existed, and this film’s historical stance mixed with its focus on large-scale gladiator fights felt like a perfect emulation of that style, and it appeared to meet similar results to previous examples, as Gladiator was a very successful movie of that year. It became the second highest grossing movie of the year, won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Actor, helped reinvent the ‘’sword-and-sandal’’ film genre, rekindled interest in Ancient Greece/Rome for the mass majority, and became a staple example that many other films tried to recapture and emulate. It definitely lefts its mark, but did it deserve to? In 180AD, the Roman army led by General Maximus (played by Russell Crowe) has claimed victory against the Germanic tribe, and Maximus plans to retire away from fighting and return to his quaint simple life with his wife and son. However, Emperor Marcus Aurelius (played by Richard Harris) appoints Maximus as his successor over his own son, Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix) who he feels is unfit to rule. Before he can think over what was asked of him, Commodus murders his father, arrests Maximus for not swearing loyalty to him, and murders his wife and son for good measure. Now bent on revenge, Maximus finds his way into being sold to gladiator trainer Proximo (played by Oliver Reed in his last performance) and discovers a way to get close to Commodus, who has become the new emperor, by succeeding in the gladiator rings and working his way up the ranks to confront him. Commodus discovers that Maximus is alive and tries to find a way to quell the support he is getting from the crowd, all the while his sister, Lucilla (played by Connie Nielsen) fears her brother’s incestuous advances and tries to help Maximus in taking him down. Bodies will fall and theatrics will thrive as Maximus fights to exact his revenge on the man who took everything away from him. Despite the massive pomp and circumstance surrounding it, Gladiator isn’t the masterpiece that’s it’s been paraded as, substituting out interesting character and engaging content for flashy spectacle and hypnotizing material.

The premise of this story has roots in real life as certain names and occurrences were based on real events, but a majority of the story was taken from the 1958 novel Those About to Die, written by Daniel P. Mannix. The film suffered through serious complications, with several rewrites to the script due to most of the cast being unsatisfied with the quality, as well as the passing of Oliver Reed before production wrapped, which caused them to use a CGI body-double for the remainder of his scenes. Despite these issues, it still came out to massive success and to its credit, in a serviceably structured manner. The film is presented and delivered in a perfectly acceptable way that has solid pacing and stable direction to make what is being showcase coherent, accessible, and digestible enough to make it a relatively easy sit despite the length. It hits the beats that are required for this very familiar tale of revenge and a person being thrown down from the highest tower to claw back up to exact justice, finding enough sprinkles throughout its almost three-hour length to have softer moments against the aggressive action set pieces, so the film isn’t at fault in that department. The problem lies in the level of investment and care put into those qualities, and how it overall fails massively because it very much feels like it doesn’t care about those elements. Even for the year 2000, this story written by David Franzoni was decades old and was even being presented by similar motion picture epics before it (Ben Hur essentially has the same format of narrative and had adaptations released in 1925 and 1959), so the novelty of this kind of bare-minimum revenge factor is only going to be intriguing through what new things can be brought to the table, and the movie does actually manage to showcase its own form of commentary. The whole idea and popularity surrounding gladiator pits is interesting, and the usage and even political angle that comes from this spectacle does raise its own form of intriguing insight that’s even relevant today; how people will mindlessly cheer on violence as long as it doesn’t involve them, how the crowd mentality formed its own identity which had its own level of power, and how those with status could either manipulate it to their means or fail prey to being villainized against the ‘’chosen hero’’, its all pretty interesting and cool,  and this film and its script written by Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson does bring up those elements to its credit. However, it doesn’t take any unique directions, everything that happens is beyond predictable and stale, and while the directing by Ridley Scott is sound, it’s not interesting or even dramatic enough to stand out.

One of the glaring faults comes down to the cast of characters and the actors involved with them. Even if a story that is very old-fashioned is presented, it can be saved if the characters are interesting enough and they come across as people that you actively want to follow. In this film, it’s hard to even remember a character’s name, let alone get invested in any of them, as all of them are either blank archetypes of roles that are common within this kind of narrative, or just personality-less shells that only exists to kill things and look cool while doing it. It’s not like the actors aren’t trying as you can tell that they are, but it feels like the direction they were given was very blanket and not deep in a lot of nuance or complexity as the writing and even the story didn’t support that. This was the film that shot Russell Crowe to star power success, and even managed to secure him a win for Best Actor, but he’s always been a performer that has repeatedly portrayed roles in a very bland, one-note demeanor that requires little expression, emotion or even character. Maximus is no different; he’s the traditional rough and gruff general type with a humble nature that comes from a loving family, its expected and nothing new or fresh is brought to the table to make him the least bit interesting. To Crowe’s credit, the writing isn’t allowing him to be anything more than just a man who kills things effectively, so that’s all he’s going to be, and while you can tell he is trying his best, his style of acting mixed with the unfavorable script just leaves him as a plank of wood, not help by the fact that he doesn’t even look the part for what they say he is (Russell Crowe TOTALLY looks like a Spaniard). Joaquin Phoenix has the exact opposite acting style and goes so over-the-top in parts that it feels incredibly out of place to the rest of the cast but is at least so intriguingly hammy and is carried with such an odd sense of royal pompousness that he’s at least memorable despite playing a generic role. Connie Nielsen could’ve formed a good character, but her role isn’t allowed to explore much outside of being an object of past desire for Maximus (as well as a current desire for her brother disturbingly), Oliver Reed’s character barely leaves an impression, and all the other gladiators have no memorable lines or characteristics despite also having some recognizable names attached (you have a fresh Djimon Hounsou and you do nothing with him).

Since the spectacle of the film clearly seemed like one of the most important elements when creating the movie, it makes sense that the film would try to be big, grand, and epic, to wavering results. You can feel when watching the movie how much effort was put into the technicals and behind-the-scenes work, and even if it doesn’t match similar levels of grandiose scale that movies did before or even after, you can still find it impressive all these years later. Due to running low on budget at times, most of the crew members had to physically create the sets and props and the amount of money and tiring labor that was required to construct them both physically and digitally is showcased in this film. The production design by Arthur Max, Crispian Sallis and Emilio Ardura is muted in color and not always the best filmed, but it looks impressive in moments, the costume design by Janty Yates feels appropriate for the time and theatrical, the arenas have a nice authentic feel to them and are appropriately sized and given magnitude, and it does bring some nice action flair to the gladiator scenes. Those are definitely the better moments in the film where you not only get some decent action moments, but also the before-mentioned hype and energy surrounding gladiator duels, and how they can be as brutal as they are theatrical and showy (it’s not good enough to have two guys brutalizing each other to death, it needs three live tigers as well to make it right). The real flaw with the action comes in the form of the editing by Pietro Scalia, and how quick and rapid it is to the point where it’s very hard to make any of the action or even most of the cinematography out. It feels much more like a modern action film in that regard with these techniques and nothing like the style it’s trying to replicate, and that comes with its own form of terrible 2000s filming techniques, like slow-motion filming for no reason outside of making some of the action hard to watch. The musical score by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard is appropriately big, booming, and appropriate for the time period and setting, even if certain elements do feel a little overly wistful in parts and something that would be used in a DreamWorks property (fitting since DreamWorks Pictures did co-produce this).

Gladiator is a favourite for many but feels like a movie that is all showboating without much depth. For a story that is all about the trivialities of a controlled event that is largely mindless and only exists to distract audience members with flashy violence and over-the-top dramatics, it’s pretty close to the movie itself right down to every shallow fiber. The film is honestly not truly awful as you can feel the people behind it did care about what they were making and there wasn’t a sense of any lack of effort put behind it because there clearly was, right down to the fact that the crew had to do extra work to get some of these set pieces done. The problem lies in the characters being bland and unlikeable, the writing being familiar and without much uniqueness, and the story feeling so bare bones and obvious that it feels centuries old. If these elements won’t bother you and you can get into the atmosphere, the action, and the visuals, it will provide for you, but if not than its going to be a soulless experience right up until the last stab in the gut.