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Gladiator deserves a very Roman thumbs upMovieReview■ Starring Russell Crowe■ Grant Park, Garden City, Kildonan Place, Portage Place, St. Vital, Polo Park■ PA★ ★★★1/2 out of five By Alison Giiimor____BEING a good gladiator is not just about killing (though Kmley Scott s aggressively graphic, hypnoticallyU I ft?*1™ lghl sc.enes suggest that a high body count helps). It s about “winning the mob,” says slave-trader Proximo (Oliver Reed).This gloriously overblown ancient epic is a mob-winner, offering us wonderfully barbaric spectacle wrapped up in hign-neroie seriousness; flattering our belief in virtue while fulfilling our visceral desires forrevenge; and using 21 st- Gladiator century technical tricks to bring us the scope and sweep of a very old-fashioned genre.The best balancing act by director Scott (Alien,Blade Runner), though,is his masterful com- ____mand of tone — an unblinking earnestness, devoid of irony or campand yet somehow miraculously aware of its own sublime silliness.Scott is aided by a charismatic, physical performance from Russell Crowe (The Insider), who brings Kirk Dougias-style intensity to his role as Maximus, trusted general to the weary and philosophical Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). Crowe can say things like, “On my signal, release hell,” and really, really mean it.Despite his battlefield prowess, Maximus has no stomach for court intrigue, wanting only to get back to his wife and son and the rusticated life of a farmer. When the ailing emperor appoints Maximus rather than his own son Com-modus (Joaquin Phoenix) as successor, however, Maximus’s life is wrecked by political machinations.His family lost and his rank stripped, he is captured as a slave and then sold to Proximo as arena-fodder, becoming a gladiator who must fight to the death to entertain the rabble, who indicate if they want victims spared or killed by holding their thumbs up or down. (There's a dear message here that anyone who sees The Jerry Springer Show as the low point of Western culture is forgetting her history.)The action cuts between the blood-and-sand brutality of the gladiators’ battles and the decadence of the imperial court, where Commodus, his sister Lueilla (Connie Nielsen), corrupt sycophants and scheming senators are declining and falling all over the place.The two worlds finally come together in a show-off showdown between Maximus and Commodus at the Roman Colosseum.Wholly improbable and voluptuously satisfying, Gladiator and its sheer shivery pleasure in cinematic spectacle and big emotion deserve a very Roman “thumbs up.”mm■x*IIVR
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Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA
Fri, May 05, 2000
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