Gladiator: Critic Reviews

Though the digital effects lack the weight and conviction of their equivalents in old Cecil B. De Mille movies, Ridley Scott's sword-and-sandal epic has some of the intensity of old Hollywood in terms of storytelling, spectacle, and violence.

Ultimately, Gladiator is an honorable and inoffensive spectacle with nothing extraordinary to recommend it.

The Roman costume drama, all dressed to the IX's, has taken a long holiday from the big screen.

Really excellent but really violent Oscar winner.

Russell Crowe is as believable a Spaniard here as Charlton Heston was a Mexican in "Touch of Evil." But director Ridley Scott took greater interest in entwining an empire's intrigue with its people's turmoil than emphasizing bread-and-circus brutality.

...stirring action, good performances, and a plethora of visual delights.

The brutality has such a mythical grandeur that it occasionally resembles beauty.

Beefcake! Blood! Body slams! Boring! Boring? Well, not quite, but at 150 minutes, "Gladiator" isn't entirely the thrilling, action-packed Roman epic some fans of the genre were expecting.

Epic cinema is back.

Scott triumphantly transports us back to the Roman Empire circa 180 A.D. with a painter's eye for detail, a proven talent for manufacturing exotic realities (such as the future shock of Blade Runner) and a sweet tooth for utter spectacle.

Meaty and satisfying.

If a gladiator film doesn't work as spectacle or as bloodthirsty action, what's left? Drama? It's dead on that level, too...

The film is good, at times grizzly, fun -- of epic proportions.

A Roman version of Ben-Hur, Gladiator succeeds on only slightly more levels than it fails.

Notwithsdanding the blood, gore, and CG effects, this is an old-fashioned historical saga, a throwabck to the sand-and-sandals epics of Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur.

The cast is strong (notably Nielsen as Commodus's vacillating sister, and the late Oliver Reed, unusually endearing as a gladiator owner), the pacing lively, and the sets, swordplay and Scud catapults impressive.

Gladiator is a movie that while watching, you can enjoy; for a while.

There's careful thought evident in suggesting what can only be conjectured. If you're going to enjoy this entertainment, don't be overly preoccupied with historical accuracy.

It's an exciting yarn...and does not disappoint the action junkie. It's just not great.

Listen to the audience as they leave the theatre. Are they talking about being moved by honor and justice, or going 'wow' at the bloodshed so spectacularly delivered?

Scott...has delivered the first Roman Empire epic in more than 30 years and it's a doozy.

[Crowe's] commanding performance not only towers over Ridley Scott's epic adventure, but elevates it to a higher plane.

If no one paid attention to Russell Crowe after his stellar performances in "The Insider" and "L.A. Confidential," they did so after he put on his Roman togs.

...One of those technically superlative, appallingly expensive, loud, sweeping, 2 1/2-hour-long epics with lots of grit and bloodlust but very little soul.

Even when Gladiator turns nonsensical, and even when its effects shots aren't persuasive, it's hard to look away, and its 154 minutes flew by.