Gladiator Reviews
Total Film
This is visceral film-making at its finest, painted on the grandest of canvases, and yet, one which maintains the finest eye for detail.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Top CriticThe fusion of the ancient and the modern -- even to the point of some sly echoes of our own sports-mad society -- is seamless. Gladiator does indeed deliver the glory that was Rome, but it also clinically dissects the assumptions on which it was built.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
AV Club
In the end, Gladiator is overdrawn and too insubstantial for its own good, just like the old days, but it satisfies as entertainment on a grand scale.
Common Sense Media
Really excellent but really violent Oscar winner.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Suite101.com
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Movie Metropolis
...stirring action, good performances, and a plethora of visual delights.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
LarsenOnFilm
The brutality has such a mythical grandeur that it occasionally resembles beauty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Bangor Daily News (Maine)
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Sacramento News & Review
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Big Picture Big Sound
The film is good, at times grizzly, fun -- of epic proportions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
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.
EmanuelLevy.Com
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
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.
Cinema Signals
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Reeling Reviews
It's an exciting yarn...and does not disappoint the action junkie. It's just not great.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)
Scott...has delivered the first Roman Empire epic in more than 30 years and it's a doozy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
TheMovieReport.com
[Crowe's] commanding performance not only towers over Ridley Scott's epic adventure, but elevates it to a higher plane.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Zap2it.com
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
