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Gladiator tries to reach Braveheart but never
quite gets there. They both feature humble, noble men who are
great warriors and leaders. Both the men want nothing more then
to live peacefully, but each of their wives are murdered and so
they rise up to fight the tyranny. They are both visited by the
would-be lovers of their enemies in secret – and are admired
by them. They both go to any extent and make any sacrifice to
forward their cause and are both captured by secret ambush. Most
importantly, both heroes have the unconditional support of actor
Tommy Flanagan.
Despite all the similarities, Gladiator feels like a
pale reflection of the former. It doesn’t have any of the
spirit, courage, or nobility of Braveheart, or even of
the equally comparable Spartacus, for that matter. Yet the film
is strong enough to be evaluated for its own sake. The story does
have its own twist to it. Instead of a slave or commoner of some
sort fighting for freedom, Maximus (Russell Crowe) is a general
of the Roman army and is even offered the empire by Emperor Marcus
Aurelius (Richard Harris). But the Emperor’s evil son, Commodus
(Joaquin Pheonix), takes things into his own hands and gets rid
of Maximus. Maximus is then put into slavery and is trained as
a gladiator. He becomes the greatest of gladiators and uses his
popularity to bring about his revenge on Commodus.
Russell Crowe is successful in his portrayal of champion warrior,
but Pheonix almost takes the show away from him as a cold, creepy
dictator who is in love with his sister (Connie Nielsen). Possibly
the strongest reason to see Gladiator is just for the
cinematography. Ridley Scott’s picture is always beautiful
and many of the action sequences are fantastically filmed. There
are a few scenes where we can tell we’re looking at CG in
the background, which seems like something that doesn’t
need to be the case moving into the 21st century, but it’s
often pretty nonetheless.
One tagline for Gladiator is “What we do in life
echoes in eternity.” Gladiator tries to play up
the idea but, with the exception of a pretty nice scene at the
end, generally fails to say anything significant. It really feels
contrived, like it’s just a token idea thrown into the mix
so the film is something more than the simple action film it really
is. It is, however, slightly heartwarming in its finale and does
serve to remind you you’ve watched a fairly fun film.
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