Well there a lot of Best Picture winner that my brothers own that I wanted to watch and review before they go back to college for the fall. And since the younger brother is going back sooner then the other, I thought I'd get his Best Picture movies out of the way. So I'm starting that with Gladiator.
Plot: Maximus is the general of the roman army in 180 A.D. where in the beginning of the film, he had just finished a battle against the Germanic. Shortly after the battle, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, asks Maximus to temporarily leadership of Rome when he's gone and to use it to return power to the senate of Rome, despite the fact that he has a son named Commodus. When Commodus find about about this, he murder his father and claims the throne, and then orders his men to kill Maximus and his wife and son back at his farm. Maximus escapes, but he rides home to find his family already dead and crucified. After he buries them, he is found unconscious by slave-traders who take him to Zucchabar, where he is forced to fight as a Gladiator.
Now I thought this movie was pretty darn good when I saw it a few years ago. But seeing it again...it's entertaining but it's still not that spectacular. I mean they seem to do an alright job in giving us the world of Rome from that time and some historical accuracy on a few levels for characters like Commodus and Lucilla, and the action was entertaining and more or less realistic looking. But the story was not all that impressive and most the characters were possibly a little too serious. I mean it had one light moment that I can think of, but it was all that big. I know it's a drama, but most of the dramatic stuff was not displayed all that well outside of just being serious as they say their lines.
Actors/Characters
Russel Crowe/Maximus: Of the actors that was a little too focuses on just being so serious, I would say Crowe did that the most. I mean sure he goes through a lot of stuff that are the whole reason for why he does that, but I think there were point where he could've done more then that. Like when he was crying when he saw the crucified bodies of his family; I liked one or two things he did to show Maximus' pain over the matter but on a while, I thought he was mostly displaying the same serious face only that he had his mouth a little wider or something around that.
Juaquin Phoenix/Commodus: I thought he was the best in terms of acting honestly. Because even though he was mostly serious too, he displayed much more emotion and sometimes even movement that helped him really display how Commodus is cowardly, ruthless and power hungry.
Music: I enjoyed the music a lot. My favorite tracks would be in most of the action music. I use to on soundtrack all the time when I was a kid long before I first watched this movie and it's just has a nice sense of adventure when it plays.
Editing: Most of it is okay but there were a couple of things that I didn't like. Mostly how in a lot of the action scenes, especially in the first battle of the movie, there would be times where they're randomly showing a shot that's kind of in slow-motion or would keep cutting to shots where they're way too close up and the camera is shaking a lot. They have their points with stuff like that but I think it was a little much for both the slow-motion and the shaking cameras.
And that's my review for Gladiator. It's not the best with acting or story, but you can still enjoy it anyway with some decent history accuracy and some good battles scenes.
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