Roman holiday

>> Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a hollow victory

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

There's a scene in Gladiator, as one would rightly expect in a movie about gladiators, where the Roman Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) must decide the fate of his nemesis Maximus (Russell Crowe) with the ol' thumbs-up/thumbs-down routine. With equally good reasons for both killing and chilling, Commodus' fist wavers in the air indecisively.

This writer can sympathize. Once the dust had settled and I'd shook the ring of steel and the roar of the coliseum mob out of my head, I remained plagued by mixed feelings about Gladiator. A swords-and-sandal epic in the grand old style directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner), the film offers a visual spectacle on par with Cecil B. DeMille's epics of yore--and the dramatic complexity of that old Hercules cartoon series.

True, historical epics should be almost unendurably long, but only to give breathing space to the intricate jigsaw puzzle of politicking and deceit that defined the Roman Empire. Problem here is, the dynamics of the conflict around which Gladiator is built are spelled out in bold, capital letters in the first act.

Emperor-in-waiting Commodus resents his father's preference of noble general Maximus. In an incestuous spin, he also resents the bedroom eyes his sister Lucilla's making at Maximus. So he murders his dad and orders that Maximus and his family be executed. Maximus survives, but in slavery, and climbs the ranks of the gladiator scene to get a crack at Commodus. Okay, gotcha.

As Scott harps endlessly on the characters' simple motivations, clarifying for the mouthbreathers, the film runs a good half-hour too long. After all, the mouthbreathers (this writer included) are only there for the fighting.

The film stumbles a bit in that respect as well. From the opening battle with the barbarians of Germania to the dusty pits of the coliseum, the fighting is satisfactory, although Scott relies too much on hyperactive editing and sound effects (wait a minute, who just got killed?!). One sees this and yearns for the good ol' days of Ben Hur, when death on the chariot track was simple, graphic and FX-free.

The one aspect of Gladiator that is without fault is the set design. The bleed between the handmade and the computer-generated is almost undetectable, and man, does it all ever look big. Only the rotund and late Oliver Reed, as the gladiators' slavemaster, threatens to outsize the imperial edifices. The sprawl of Rome, the grandeur of the emperor's palace and the sheer mass of the coliseum are presented in maddening detail and convincing precision. For this reason I suggest that one reverse the usual "wait for the video," and catch Gladiator while it's still on the big screen, because only that can do this impressive, if hollow, spectacle justice.

Gladiator opens Friday, May 5