Gladiator (2000) review

Gladiator is a revenge film with an unusually strong sense of mortality. Its hero is dying from the first scene to the last, and the film's willingness to build a blockbuster around a man who has already lost everything is the reason it works better than its imitators.

Revenge as Structure

Maximus is a general who wins a war for Rome, is denied the succession by a jealous heir, and is sentenced to death along with his family. He survives, is sold into slavery, and becomes a gladiator. The plot is ancient and unashamedly simple, and its simplicity is the film's greatest asset: there is no ambiguity about what Maximus wants, which allows the film to spend its energy on how he gets it.

The arena sequences are structured as a progression from anonymous killing to public fame, and Scott uses the Roman crowd as a character. The film's political argument — that the mob's appetite for spectacle is what keeps tyrants in power — is delivered through staging rather than speeches. When Maximus reveals himself in the Colosseum, the film has already established that the crowd's loyalty is the only currency that matters.

Read more about action cinema in our Action genre hub, explore the work of Ridley Scott in our directors section, or see where this film lands in best films of the 2000s.

Production and Scale

The film's Rome was built substantially practically, including a partial reconstruction of the Colosseum at one-third scale with the remainder added digitally. The combination is more convincing than either would be alone, because the practical sections give the digital extensions something to anchor to. The Battle of Carthage opening sequence remains one of the best-staged large-scale battles in modern cinema.

Ridley Scott's visual approach is muscular and unfussy, and John Mathieson's photography gives the film a bleached, dusty palette that distinguishes it from the saturated look of most historical epics. Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard's score is the film's emotional engine, and the 'Now We Are Free' theme is one of the most recognisable pieces of film music of the century. The fact that it bears a close resemblance to Holst's 'Mars' has been noted extensively.

Crowe and Phoenix

Russell Crowe won Best Actor for this, and the performance is a study in a man who has stopped caring about outcomes. Maximus is not charming and he is not particularly clever; he is simply unstoppable, and Crowe plays the grief underneath the competence without ever making it explicit. The famous 'Are you not entertained?' line is delivered with contempt rather than defiance, which is the correct reading.

Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus is the film's most interesting creation. He is not a competent villain — he is a weak man with absolute power, desperate for love he has never received, and Phoenix plays the insecurity so clearly that the character's cruelty becomes legible rather than arbitrary. The sibling rivalry with Lucilla is underdeveloped, but the performance is strong enough to carry the material.

Where It Falls Short

The film's historical accuracy is loose to the point of fantasy, and its depiction of Rome's political institutions is simplified to the point of irrelevance. This matters less than it might in a film that is openly a fable, but the film's pretensions to seriousness occasionally sit awkwardly with its departures.

The pacing is also uneven, with a middle section that spends too long in the provinces and a final act that resolves too quickly. Oliver Reed's Proximo is a highlight and the film's emotional warmth largely comes from him, and his death mid-production — the role was completed with digital assistance — gives his final scenes an unintended resonance. The film is a superb piece of entertainment with ambitions beyond what it achieves, which is a fair trade.

Themes and ideas

• Revenge and its cost
• The mob as political force
• Dying well
• Legitimacy and succession