(No spoilers. At least none worse than the director’s.)
Let’s see: Dying Emperor, Ambitious Son, Honorable Man. I wonder how this one’s gonna come out?
And since we know how it’s going to end, why does it take three hours to get there?
Gladiator wouldn’t have been a bad movie if it had been cut to two hours (with commercials) and released on TNT. Then they would have cut out some of the stilted dialogue (“I love you!” “And I love you.”) and self-indulgent cinematography. But someone decided they were going to make an “epic”, so we got an “epic”.
And if they had all that time couldn’t they make the story line a little less dependent on fantastic coincidences? And what’s with the annoying camera effects? Jerky stop-motion sequences, inexplicable black screens (an effect that was somehow important at first but ended as mysteriously as it began), look-at-my-computer-animation scenes.
Save your money. Better yet, wait for it to come out on TV. But only if they fit it in two hours.