journal features

movie review - Gladiator

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Sydney, 2000.05.14

Gladiator is a brilliantly filmed piece about a Roman General who's fighting in the 'Germania' campaigns in the second Century CE. He is named by his pal the Emperor to take on the mantel, as the older man foresees his imminent death. That's where the General's trouble begins: he's immediately the target of a thousand political enemies.

Soon, his home is destroyed, his wife and boy are dead, and he's a slave to a man running gladiator circuses in the sticks. Burning with hate and seeking vengeance, he starts to claw his way back to the top.

Great story, and very good cinematography, but this one loses at least one star on the Hollywood effect, where by half of the movie is undone by the last fifteen minutes. It also treads quite a bit of cliched ground as it goes.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

—Roald Dahl