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| Star Russell Crowe stands tall on one of the most iconic posters of the 2000s, for Ridley Scott's Gladiator |
Gladiator is the story of ancient Rome's best general, who gets hunted savagely, when the emperor is murdered by his mad son, and the general is demoted to become a gladiator, who changes the foundation of the empire.
Gladiator is written by David Franzoni (Amistad (1997)), John Logan (Hugo (2011)) and William Nicholson (Grey Owl (1999)) and directed by English master filmmaker Ridley Scott (The Duellists (1977)), whose 11th feature it is.
It is a magnificent spectacle, which is accompanied by some extraordinary performances from Russell Crowe (Boy Erased (2018)), Joaquin Phoenix (Hotel Rwanda (2004)), - who is really loathsome and serpentlike and yet still humanly credible as the film's villain Commodus, - Connie Nielsen (Battle in Seattle (2007)) and Oliver Reed (Blind Justice (1988)), truly terrific in his career's last role: Reed passed away from a heart attack during production, and the remaining shots of him were created with visual effects.
The cinematography by John Mathieson (Kingdom of Heaven (2005)) is matchless. The lengthy film is expertly edited, not a second too long. The suspense is intense. SPOILER The ending is a kind of beautiful song to the bliss of afterlife. Gladiator is a triumph for everyone involved.
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Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 103 mil. $
Box office: 460.5 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 4.47 times its cost)
[Gladiator premiered 1 May (Los Angeles) and runs 155 minutes. Scott envisioned Gladiator as a revitalization of the sword-and-sandal epic previously championed by Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960). Filming began with an unfinished script; shooting took place from January - May 1999 in Malta, the UK, Italy and in California. Crowe balked at the script problems and himself came up with some of his lines. A replica about 1:3 the size of the actual Colosseum was built in Malta at the cost of 1 mil. $. Reed's sudden perishing from a heart attack during production necessitated 3.2 mil. $ spent to digitally create the roughly 2 minutes of footage with him that was not shot yet. Although Scott set out to portray the Roman empire with unheard of authenticity, the film is ripe with fictionalizations, anachronisms and changes of historical facts. The film opened #1 to a 34.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed #1 for another weekend and spent another 5 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#3-#4-#5-#5), grossing 187.7 mil. $ (40.8 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 47.7 mil. $ (10.4 %) and France with 24.4 mil. $ (5.3 %). The film was nominated for 12 Oscars, winning 5: For Best Picture, Actor, Costumes, Sound and Visual Effects. It lost Best Supporting Actor (Phoenix) to Benicio del Toro in Traffic, Art Direction to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Cinematography also to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Peter Pau), Director to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic, Editing also to Traffic, Score (Hans Zimmer) to Dun Tan for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Original Script to Cameron Crowe for Almost Famous. It also won 2/5 Golden Globe nominations, 5/15 BAFTA nominations, an AFI award, was nominated for a European Film award and a Grammy and won 3 National Board of Review awards among many other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to 4 notches lower than this one. IMDb's users have voted the film in at #41 on the site's Top 250, sitting between Psycho (1960) and City Lights (1931). Sequel plans have brewed since the film's success: Crowe engaged Nick Cave to write a script, which was eventually discarded. Another plan for a sequel plot is still in development. Scott returned with Hannibal (2001). Crowe returned in Proof of Life (2000). Gladiator is certified fresh at 77 % with a 7.27/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Gladiator?
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