The first person onscreen is, appropriately enough, Maximus (Russell Crowe, setting the bar for this year’s Best Actor race), the movie’s hero. When we meet him he is a general at war commanding thousands of troops in the name of pre-Nero Rome. Like most great war heroes in the movies, Maximus is humble and wise. His motivation in battle is more to return to his family than to defend Rome. Although, given the benevolent nature of the empire’s current Caesar, he has no qualms fighting for the great city.

      Maximus’ skill, bravery and humane qualities are rewarded when he is informed that he, not the Caesar’s son, will inherit the emperorship of Rome. Yet one of the inherit rules applying to just about all of Hollywood’s great epics is that the kinder the ruler is, the crueler and less loyal his son. Gladiator isn’t an exception. Soon Maximus is no longer a General but rather a slave and no longer fighting for his family but rather the name of the great Caesar who once tried to name him his successor only to be murdered by his blood son that very evening.

      Above all else, credit Ridley Scott, the director of the film. And then give John Mathieson, the deft cinematographer, his due as well. The two brilliant behind-the-scenes men have created an ancient Rome that few will have trouble accepting as reality. Thousands of extras are coordinated perfectly down to the most irrelevant details which only a nit-picky critic like myself would pay any heed. As for the scenery and backgrounds, to call them gorgeous would be an enormous understatement ­ if Dreamworks needs to make any more money off this film, they should have no difficulty selling postcards.

      Yet surely Scott and Mathieson wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this incredible feat without the aid of a $100 million budget. What does this tell us about Hollywood today? Perhaps those nine figures are the proof that although a fluke like The Blair Witch Project will come around from time to time, enough money combined with the right individuals can create a movie as marvelous and spectacular as Gladiator. Unfortunately, the large sum ultimately makes a little too much movie as the creative duo seem to have gotten caught up in scenery and re-creating the past so much so that they forget to advance the plot at certain points and instead test the audience’s patience with a craft that belongs in an art gallery, not on the silver screen.

      Gladiator’s good guys share a political philosophy of favoring the Senate over a dictator-like emperor. Many of the more loveable characters also put their faith in an afterlife as a form of surviving their less-than-ideal current lives. These issues raise enough debate that Gladiator manages to achieve its final success by crossing the border from being just another heroic epic to being a modern-day classic, not unlike Ben-Hur and Braveheart, even if the film could use some trimming around the edges.

Mac VerStandig, 2000