A cliched story, horrible acting, horrible characters, lame pacing, and overrated action scenes lead this to be one of the worst films to win best picture, worse than "The Hurt Locker", but not as bad as "Cavalcade". It disappoints me that the director is very well known and loved, and THIS is the first of his I get to watch. So, what's wrong with this movie. Actually, everything I mentioned above, but let's go into more detail. The story, we have all seen. The high powered person falls to an all time low, and has to work his/her way back to the top. Most movies however bring that plot thread to subtlety, but not Gladiator, they just shove the plot in your face. The acting was some of the worst of that year. The only good actor was Russell Crowe, he was decent, but everyone else had no emotion, no expression, just cardboard cutouts. You don't care about the characters, because they have no personality, no likability, they're just something that took one minute to make up. The pacing also sucked. Sometimes events took to long, other times they should have been looked at more, it never seemed even. But the absolute WORST thing is those stupid, STUPID action scenes! When someone gets killed, it immediately cuts to someone else getting killed, but then they always keep cutting until everyone is dead. Never is anyone showed actually dying or dead, it just immediately cuts to something else. It's like the movie thinks death is there to make things look hard. It's not like those people are important, but when someone dies, either show the whole thing, or just show some of the falling down. It makes death look like an annoyance and not a full tragic moment, and that's where this movie really falls flat on it's face. For that, I would say this film is heartless, but the best thing about this movie changed my mind: The Ending. This is one of the two good things of this movie, the other being the special effects. The ending was *SPOILER!!!* Maximus dies shortly after killing Commodus, and while he gets carried away, he meets his family in heaven (The wife I believe got raped to death, and the son I think got trampled by horses, but I'm not entirely sure). Now, there's a good moment right there movie, it actually has heart, unlike the rest of the movie, where when someone dies, they just cut to another scene without acknowledging it again. Besides the special effects and the great ending, there's no redeeming factors to this movie, not even Russell Crowe, he did OK, but still falls to bad writing. Overall, not worth the mental pain. Not recommended to ANYONE.
1/5
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