English director Ridley Scott initially found fame with the atmospheric science-fiction thrillers Alien and Blade Runner, two of the most-imitated films of the era. A lengthy detour through mediocrity followed, the one notable blip being Thelma and Louise, until 1997's indulgent Rambette saga G. I. Jane knocked both him and star Demi Moore into career-reassessment land for a few years (she's got the psycho-romance Passion of Mind coming next month). Meanwhile, younger brother Tony Scott, also a director, was driving truckloads of profit to the bank after lensing such mass-market fare as Beverly Hills Cop II, Crimson Tide, and Enemy of the State. Now, Ridley returns from hiatus with a sprawling $100-million action movie.
You gotta wonder if maybe a conversation like this didn't happen one day over tea and scones in the Scott household:
"So, Ridley, tell us what you're up to these days."
"Well, Mum, I'm looking through scripts, you know, mulling over my next project..."
"Maybe you should try doing a movie with black people. Tony's had such good luck with black people. Much better luck than you had with that butch Demi person. Honestly, the thighs on that girl, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she has to wear stretch knickers. Tony, why don't you be a good brother and introduce Ridley to Will Smith. Or that Denzel fellow, he's popular these days. Handsome, too, in a black-person sort of way."
"Mum, Ridley doesn't need any help from me, he's one of the most respected directors in the business. By the way, I brought you 'round a brown XJ-12 to drive now that summer's over. It's parked out back next to the yellow one."
"Thank you, darling. See, Ridley, how well Tony's done with his little action movies?"
"Actually, I was thinking of doing something about gladiators myself next."
"Oooo, gladiators, how exciting. Maybe you could get that Tom Cruise fellow. I'll bet Tony could introduce you. You worked with Tom Cruise in one of your pictures, didn't you, Tony?"
"Yes, Mum, in Top Gun. But Tom's still busy with that interminable Stanley Kubrick thing."
"Well, jets then, Ridley. If you can't get Tom Cruise you should at least have jets in your next movie. And that lovely Geena Davis too, who did so well for you before. Big bones, her. Roman women had big bones, Ridley, you see it in all those statues. Geena Davis would be good in your gladiator movie. And don't forget the black people. Maybe you could get that Eddie Murphy fellow. Tony, why don't you be a good brother and ask Eddie Murphy if he'd like to be in Ridley's gladiator movie..."
There's no sign of Cruise, Davis, jets, Will Smith, Denzel, or Murphy in Gladiator, directors being notorious for avoiding advice. But it does have, in addition to a budget bigger than Cuba's gross national product, the newest rising male megastar, Russell Crowe. Fresh from losing 50 method-pounds that helped him earn an Oscar nomination for The Insider, Crowe plays Maximus, a heroic Roman general who in 180 A.D. is marked for succession by ailing emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). Caesar's simpering, effete, incestuous son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) gets wind of the plan, commits patricide, assumes the throne, and orders Maximus executed. But the general has learned a few things about combat while fighting German barbarians for three years and escapes, fleeing to his vineyard in Spain only to find on arrival that Commodus has had his wife and young son murdered.
Things go from worse to worser when he is captured by slavers and sold to Proximo (Oliver Reed), a former gladiator who in the five years since enlightened Aurelius banned bloody spectacle from the Coliseum has been staging mayhem-as-entertainment in the provinces. Seeing an opportunity for retribution, Maximus slashes his way to minor stardom in the bush leagues, then travels with Proximo's troupe to Rome when Commodus reinstates the games to curry favor with the masses. But when the ex-general finds fresh adulation as an armored Ric Flair, his plans for revenge are complicated by rampant intrigue involving the new Caesar, the populist Senate, and Commodus' sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen)
At its most basic, Gladiator is nothing more than the typical vengeance-driven plot wrapped in grandiose depictions of ancient combat, like Conan the Barbarian and Braveheart; blood splatters, chariots crash, tigers maul, torsos are bisected, and skulls are cleaved. The difference is, while Scott's opening battlefield scenes and ensuing gladiatorial matches display technique and experience far surpassing Mel Gibson's (frankly, the combat here is of a scale and brutality that makes Braveheart look like little more than a somewhat contentious Amway convention), the story suffers input from three different screenwriters who all seem much less willing to cut out a character's line than cut off a character's arm. Long, long talky stretches, reflecting cumbersome last-minute dialog that often got to the actors just in time for shooting, not only slow the action to a crawl at times, but painfully display the haste with which they were assembled. This film feels every minute of its nearly three-hour length.
Still, if testosterone on an epic scale is your drug of choice, Gladiator is an impressive fix. Crowe has help in his arena escapades from black person Djimon Honsu (Amistad) and Ralph Moeller, who was last seen starring in the syndicated TV treatment of "Conan." The grandeur of the Roman Empire is recreated on a near-intoxicating scale, with lavish sets in Morocco and Malta further enhanced by computer graphics (c.g.i. tricks and clever editing were also used, Brandon Lee Crow-style, to finish out Oliver Reed's scenes shot after he died of a heart attack in a Malta pub shortly before his part wrapped; that trick alone supposedly cost a couple extra $mil). If you're not looking for anything even remotely approaching the actual events of the period, and don't mind the impression conveyed by a heavily English-accented cast that the British Invasion apparently took the continent by storm 2,000 years before the Beatles arrived*, it's an appropriate opening salvo for the summer blockbuster season.
One more thing -- in another coincidence like the many that litter filmdom, actor Steve Reeves, a former Mr. Universe who almost single-pectorally popularized the sword-and-sandal genre of the 50s and 60s, passed away just a few days before Gladiator was released. Sure, Ben Hur and *Scott originally wanted Australian-born Crowe to play the Spaniard Maximus with an Antonio Banderas brogue; Crowe refused. The director compensates by putting flamenco music on the soundtrack. Even Phoenix, the only American onboard, has to feign limeyspeak to fit in.
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