2000 / 155 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“I am Maximus. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”

As Russell Crowe uttered this line, and did so with the sort of toughness that men like Jean Claude Van Damme can only dream of, I felt a chill run down my spine. It was that powerful of a moment. And it is all thanks to Russell Crowe, who is quickly emerging as one of our finest actors. There are few men in modern cinema capable of delivering such a line and making a cold ripple trickle down your backbone. Crowe is one of them. Were it not for his magnificent performance, it is doubtful that this movie would work at all. If it did, it certainly would not be the thrill machine that it is now.

“Gladiator” follows the exploits of Maximus. He begins as the leader of the Roman army under Emperor Marcus Aurellis (Richard Harris, fine as always). Marcus joins Maximus on the front lines to give him some important news. It seems that he has decided to give his son the shaft as it were and proclaim Maximus the next Emperor of Rome. Maximus does not really want the job, however. All he wants is to return home to the wife and son that he has not seen in two years.

Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) wants the job. He wants it quite desperately in fact. So much so that he kills his dying father and sentences Maximus and his family to death in order to assure himself a place on the throne of Rome. Maximus escapes. His family is not so lucky. While Maximus is mourning (and, Lord, what mourning, Crowe presents a very moving and heartbreaking picture of the immense loss this man has suffered) he is captured by a group of slave traders and forced into gladiator combat under Proximo (the late, great Oliver Reed). The other gladiators toy with their opponents for a while before killing them. Maximus walks into the arena, slaughters all the men, and then returns to the pit where he lives. He only changes his manner when Proximo informs him that great gladiators are often presented with their freedom….at the hands of the Emperor. In this, Maximus sees his chance for revenge.

There is a great deal of court intrigue and politics in this movie, and it is stirring and fascinating. Motives are explained. Light is shed upon tactics. We always know what is happening and why in a story that in less assured hands would easily have become confusing. The only time the film does become confusing is in its battle scenes. These sequences are edited very quickly, in a way that I suppose is meant to convey the high speed of combat. I suppose I can see this reasoning, but in a movie whose point is to show battles and man to man combat, it would have been nice for them to pace the scenes so that I would not have to struggle to determine what was happening and to whom.

Other than that, I have no complaints about the film. The acting is uniformly good. I had never heard of Oliver Reed before hearing that he had died during the filming of this movie. But after seeing him in this, I want to seek out some of his other films. He is a mighty presence in this movie. I was worried about how well I would like Joaquin Phoenix, but those fears were thankfully ungrounded. I enjoyed his performance here as a weaselly tyrant. He strikes just the right note as this impatient little whelp and I found him enjoyable. I also liked Connie Nielsen as his scheming sister, to whom Joaquin seems to have a little too much brotherly love. Hell, even the kid in this movie is good. Take note Lucas.

There is a little humor in this movie, but it is light, subtle humor. It is the kind that adds to a movie like this rather than distracting from it. This is another lesson that more filmmakers could learn. In “The Messenger: Joan of Arc” for example, I found that the touches of humor brought the film to a standstill. Here they flow effortlessly, as they should. They break the tension precisely when it needs breaking and flow from the narrative rather than being shoe-horned into it.

But it is Crowe’s performance that makes this film breathe. He is as good here as Harrison Ford was in the “Indiana Jones” films, or as Mel Gibson was in the “Mad Max” movies. His character is given little with which to work, but Russell finds subtle nuances in the character that even the screenwriter probably hadn’t considered. He brings this man to life and makes us care deeply about him. In “The Insider” he was given a powerhouse role and he was magical in it. But here he shows that he can work wonders with even average material. That is why this performance will make him a star.

So, like a Caeser, I will give this film a thumb up. That means that I allow it to live. In fact, I hope it lives well, and that the summer’s other entertainments will be at least as good as this one.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2000 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.