Gladiator

Written by: David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson Starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Richard Harris

It is fair to say that if anyone could have put a new spin on the hidebound Roman gladiator genre, Ridley Scott is the one... which means we are in for a long, tough slog, because Scott has badly miscalculated with this overlong, overstuffed, over-serious turkey of a picture. Weighing in at about 2-1/2 hours, the movie seems to drag on endlessly, with paralyzingly static scenes of wooden dialogue by actors who should have known better grinding the whole project to a shuddering halt whenever it threatens to build up some narrative momentum. If I sound peeved, it’s because I am; this is just the sort of boondoggle that gives Hollywood a bad name. It reportedly cost about a hundred million dollars to make, which is a painful figure when you realize just how little story-telling fun we get for the money. I also read that Scott rolled his eyes when the project was first presented. He should have listened to his better instincts. This mess is especially disappointing coming from Scott, who is a director with tremendous visual style, but more importantly, one with a keen sense of narrative flow.

In his previous pictures (“Alien,” “Blade Runner,” and “Thelma and Louise,” to name a few) he demonstrated the ability to make his directorial flourishes serve and enhance the story. In “Gladiator,” though, he serves up a bunch of camera and film stock trickery that does nothing but call attention to itself and stop the picture in its tracks. It also gave me a headache. The picture takes this fifty-plus year-old genre and does nothing with it--no modern spin, no different slant, no wry twist, and most deadening of all, no sense of humor. If ever a genre (not to mention a movie) could have benefited from some lightening up, this is the one.

But everyone in the picture walks around scowling all the time; it looks like no one is having any fun at all. Unfortunately, neither do we. The story, regrettably, is the same as the story in every gladiator movie ever made: Maximus (Crowe) (and by the way, it doesn’t help matters that most of the characters have names that sound like the 2001 lineup from Toyota) is a great general who is betrayed by Commodus (Phoenix). He is forced to become a slave, then a gladiator, ultimately winning justice and revenge through his prowess as a warrior and his strength of character. Oh sorry, did I hear a yawn? Me too. It is almost as if they went out to make an exact copy of those old-fashioned Roman epics, with all the flaws intact, and perhaps adding a few new ones as well. The choice of Crowe to play Maximus is an interesting one. Although he is muscular, he is not so physically imposing a figure (think Schwarzenegger) as one might expect for the role.

But he has a tightly coiled energy that makes us think that he actually could be a great warrior. He is a terrific actor (as we know from “ The Insider ” and “L.A. Confidential”) but he, like everyone else, is hamstrung by the sluggish dialogue and leaden pacing, to the point where I found it hard to see him as in any way inspiring. Connie Nielsen does bring a nice regal bearing to the role of Lucilla, Commodus’s sister and a former paramour (I guess--it’s never made entirely clear what happened between them) of Maximus. Phoenix makes Commodus appropriately creepy and venal. In fact, everybody stands up and recites their lines dutifully, but it is all so phony and earnest that it makes you want to scream. It would be nice if the picture were redeemed by its action sequences, but there too, incredibly, it fails. If I have said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: movies should make us see things more clearly, not less.

But Scott insists on shooting almost all the action scenes in tight close-up with a handheld camera, the result being that most of the time we can’t tell who is doing what to whom. There is a scene early in the picture (by which I mean about 45 minutes into it) when Maximus manages to escape from three armed guards. But the scene is shot so sloppily that it’s hard to say what actually happened (initially I thought that someone else had shown up to help him). Compare this with similar scenes in the original “Lethal Weapon,” when Mel Gibson escapes his captor, or even the recent “Romeo Must Die,” with Jet Li pulling a similar stunt. In these movies, you may not think you could do what the heroes did, and you may not even believe it could be done at all, but at least you knew what they were supposed to have done. Not so in “Gladiator.” I suppose in the end that isn’t so important, because none of it really has anything to do with the story, but if there were anything that could have raised this picture to the level of acceptable entertainment, it would be razor sharp action.

Instead, everything is muddled and confused, which means that Scott apparently wanted to express the chaos and confusion of battle. Instead, he has made it--and I would not have thought this possible--boring. With the exception of a very few moments, the picture is dull. There is almost never a spark that made me sit up and say “Wow.” Adding insult to injury, Scott’s highly vaunted eye seems to have betrayed him here. For all the money and costumes and horses and extras and swords and money that was spent, I cannot recall a single memorable image or striking scene. The digitally enhanced Coliseum looks, well, digitally enhanced, as do the digitally enhanced flocks of birds. The tigers may not be digitally enhanced, but they look like they are. And the repetitious scenes of clouds and sunrises and lightning look like outtakes from some National Geographic special on weather. Sad to say, it looks as if Scott got caught up in his own hype and was blinded by what he perceived as the spectacle he thought he was presenting. In the only source of irony I could find, one character in the picture says to another that the mob (think: us) can only be satisfied by spectacle. Touché, Ridley.

You have insulted the audience by assuming that we would sit transfixed by a bunch of fancy but patently artificial sets and lots of extras. Sorry, it's the year 2000; we’re a little past that now. (P.S. Is it just me, or does the Praetorian Guard look a lot like Darth Vader’s Imperial Troopers in the “Star Wars” sagas?) Often I blame the writers when a picture fails, and certainly the writers of “Gladiator” have fallen down on the job. But it’s the director’s job to pick them up, and Scott drops the ball, again and again and again. Everyone makes fun of those old Hercules pictures, and the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton “Cleopatra” is ridiculed to this day as a prime example of wretched excess. “Gladiator” is cut from the same cloth; rarely has so much been spent for so little effect. At the end of the picture, Maximus is dead (sorry if I spoiled it for you, but if you have read this far, I would hope you weren’t planning on seeing the picture anyway).

But as he lies on the ground, and Scott moves in for one of the many annoying close-ups, we can clearly see Crowe’s carotid artery pulsing away (which is more than I can say for mine after sitting through this picture). Now, that’s the kind of mistake they were supposed to have stopped making in movies a long time ago. I suppose here it’s one more way that “Gladiator” pays tribute to the bad old pictures of the past.