Gladiator (8/10)
If ever a genre was dead beyond hope, the sword-and-sandal epic was it. Who on earth would consider making such a film again, and, more to the point, who could raise the mountain of cash required to make such a movie? Director Ridley Scott and Dreamworks, that's who. If Gladiator had been a monumental flop, everyone would have shaken their heads and commented on the amazing stupidity of the whole idea. "Who wants to see a gladiator movie? A gladiator movie ferchrissakes!" Well actually, based on the film's performance at the box office, we do. Forget the cheesy and homoerotic Steve Reeves movies that inspired the pilot in Airplane! to ask "Do you like gladiator movies?", this is a full-blooded action drama for real men. Quiche-eaters should stay away.
The film opens with Maximus (Russell Crowe) about to launch the attack that will seal victory in the Roman empire's campaign in Germania. The dying emperor (Richard Harris) intends to end the line of imperial succession and restore the republic, and he calls on his friend Maximus to use his army to protect the new government. The emperor's son Commodus (Joachim Phoenix) has no intention of relinquishing his birthright, and assumes power as the new emperor. Instead of being the protector of Rome, Maximus finds himself a slave, competing as a gladiator and nursing the mother of all grudges against Commodus.
Action heroes of the recent past have tended to be musclebound airheads. Russell Crowe is a new breed: a believable hero whose pores ooze dignity and testosterone in equal measure. Crowe's effectiveness on screen is nothing to do with time spent in the gym - he's built like a pretty average guy - but has everything to do with being a magnificent actor who can excel in physical roles. Joachim Phoenix is an effective slimy scheming villain, but he sometimes delivers lines so flatly it's as if a take from a read-through made it into the final cut by mistake. Oliver Reed, who plays Maximus's owner and trainer, died during production and in one scene a performance had to be coaxed from a pseudo-Ollie fashioned from a body-double and some fancy CGI work. Reed's public image was, probably unfairly, that of an appalling drunken buffoon, but at least his career ended on a high note - he has rarely been better than he is here. At one point his character tells Maximus, "I'm an entertainer." He was certainly that, and he could not have chosen a more appropriate film to be his last.
The scenes of gladiatorial combat are breathtaking. Limbs are hacked, heads are smashed, torsos are skewered and the air is full of blood. Comparisons have been made between the combat sequences in Gladiator and the Normandy landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan, but the approaches are completely different. Whereas Spielberg used camera and post- production techniques to give the combat scenes the look of a documentary and presented the carnage as might a journalist - there it is, now look at it - Ridley Scott never dwells on the blood and gore, but instead uses an impressionistic approach to give flashes of brutal savagery and cutting away immediately. Not only does this solve problems with scissor-happy censors, it's very effective - in this form of combat, a new mortal threat is hardly more than 1/24 of a second away, so there's no time to waste dwelling on the mess you've just made of another person's body. The smell of fear and sweat and blood leaks from the screen. The battle sequence that opens the film is equally impressive. Shot in a gloomy and muddy English forest, the scale and savagery of the fighting makes for heart-pounding movie-going.
The CGI team worked their magic in creating a completely convincing interior for the Colosseum. When the gladiators first enter the arena, they are amazed at the scale and spectacle of what they are seeing. As they look up and around this vast amphitheatre, the viewpoint tracks around them and as we see the entire stadium with its thousands of spectators, we share the gladiators' amazement. The film also benefits from John Mathieson's photography and the stirring musical score, mainly by Hans Zimmer, which borrows from varied sources, notably the Mars segment of Holst's suite The Planets.
The script (by David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson) sticks to genre conventions and gives the characters plenty of overwritten stagey dialogue in which to plot their various intrigues and revenges. Maybe that's the way it has to be in this sort of movie. If centurions and emperors talked like real people, the whole thing might, paradoxically, become less believable. I don't know if any general would really say "at my command, unleash hell" - but it's great stuff. And as is usual with such traditional epics, there is plenty of chat between the memorable set pieces, but the film hardly ever drags - we are really made to care about Maximus, through his fall and rise and eventual... well I'll only say that the script provides a satisfying but poignant resolution, only slightly spoiled by the implausibility of the final showdown.
Although the script could have been written during Hollywood's last fling with this genre nearly forty years ago, Gladiator is still a technically astonishing entertainment of the most spectacular kind and demands to be seen on the biggest screen you can get to.
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Gary Jones
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