Review of a film

Four decades after Ben Hur, Spartacus, and Cleopatra, Hollywood returns in a great style to its epic tradition with Ridley Scotts Gladiator. With a wonderfully constructed story of power and revenge, abounding in intense action sequences and beautiful pictures of ancient Rome, Gladiator is a film that stays in memory for a long time.

The film is focused on a powerful character of general Maximus (in this role brilliant Russell Crowe) who becomes a slave and the star of the Coliseum, loved by the bloodthirsty Roman mob. His main aim is avenging his family killed by a tyrannical Caesar Commodus (Jacquin Phoenix). Yet the patriotic Senators want to use Maximus power to steer the nation against the tyrant Caesar, and to re-establish the Republic.
Gladiators literary narrative is perfectly balanced by the strength of its visual effects. Digitally reconstructed Coliseum with thousands of supernumeraries as well as the Senate and the Emperors Court create a second-century Rome that is entirely credible and stunning in its detail. Full of dynamic arena fights as well as battle scenes, Gladiator keeps viewers attention for the whole 2 hours and 35 minutes. Moreover, the atmosphere of the film is supported by an ingenious music by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard.

All in all, Gladiator is a film worth recommendation. Showing the world as it was two thousand years ago, it is a convincing picture of the Roman Empire, which makes us think that maybe our modern world is not much different from the ancient one. Modern action film audiences , similarily to the audiences of the Coliseum, care only for bread and circuses. Yet Gladiator is much more than that.