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DVDs
Gladiator
 By
Richard Moore
Roman
civilisation. Okay, Rome was the biggest and strongest of the ancient
empires and, at her peak, ruled a quarter of the world's people,
but she was an often brutal mistress.
The
Roman answer to political manouevring was assassination. The Roman
answer to becoming emperor was assassination. In fact, an awful
lot of Roman answers had to do with deciding things with the sword,
dagger, or by poison.
Rival,
or enemy, states copped visits from Roman legions whose discipline
and sword skills turned legionnaires into walking meat carvers who
would slice through enemy ranks.
Face-to-face
killing was what legionnaires liked and enjoying the sight of flowing
blood was not limited to soldiers, the Roman population loved blood
and guts and were fed it by the colosseum-full.
The
Games put on by emperors kept the populace entertained - and the
most acclaimed of these were the gladiator battles. Usually slaves,
the gladiators would fight to the death in brutal clashes that few
movies have tried to emulate - until now.
Gladiator
is a blood-and-sandal epic that transports you back to the nasty
realities of ancient Rome where treachery and brutality were considered
the nice parts of society.
Starring
Russell Crowe, Gladiator not only has a terrific plotline,
but stunning special effects that take full advantage of the latest
computer graphics.
Crowe
is Maximus, favoured general and adopted son of Marcus Aurelius
(Richard Harris), one of the best emperors Rome had. He has just
won a bloody victory over the Germans and is looking forward to
returning home to Spain when political hell breaks loose.
Aurelius
meets an untimely end and his mentally unstable son, Commodus (Joaquin
Phoenix), takes over and, seeing Maximus as a rival, tries to bump
him off.
Things
get very nasty for Maximus and his family and so he begins life
as a slave and then as a gladiator on his path to exacting revenge
on the new Caesar.
Now,
there are plenty of historical holes in Gladiator - too many to
go into here - but it is, after all, Hollywood and as long as you
don't watch it with a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman
Empire sitting on your lap, and suspend belief on some of the
storyline, you'll enjoy it as a terrific action/adventure movie.
The
imagery is astounding.
The
opening battle against the Germans is a gruesome, but exciting,
spectacle and sets the tone for the gladiatorial combats that follow.
They
are inventive, fast-paced and bloody, giving you the feeling that
perhaps the less hard-hitting epics of days gone by wussed it on
the level of violence.
One
of the outstanding things about Gladiator is the seamless
mixing of real and computer-generated images.
The
rendered buildings of ancient Rome look glorious and the sweeping
vistas of the city are stunning. Some have slammed them for not
being accurate - "You'd never see the Colosseum from the Forum."
- but Gladiator was never promoted as the Melway of Ancient
Times.
And
when Maximus has to battle tigers popping from under the sandy floor
of the arena it looks as if our hero is genuinely half a yellow-and-black
whisker away from a toothy end.
The
technical transfer on to DVD is excellent - the result of strict
overseeing by the director - with a razor-like sharpness to the
imagery and an almost perfect colour palette.
It
would be easy to rave on about this movie but it's sufficient to
say that most of the hype is true - it is a sensational yarn - well-acted,
well-directed and tremendously exciting.
For
mine, one of the highlights is the final, marvellous performance
from Oliver Reed as the former gladiator turned gladiator-master.
He may have been a hell-raiser but, by crikey, he could act. This
is one of his finest.
Definitely
a must-have for the DVD library.
Conclusion:
Movie:
90%
DVD
Extras: 95%
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