Gladiator (2000)

USA/United Kingdom
directed by: Ridley Scott
written by: David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson
starring: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed
seen on 19th December, 2018

I did not see the film when it first came out, but I am pretty sure that it has aged very poorly. I didn't really enjoy the first wave of "sword and sandal" films, because the wonder of cinema for me does not equal film-makers trying to build the biggest set yet. Gladiator does not bring any sort of reflection or self awareness to the genre.

The recycled soundtrack is a disgrace (even though I do realize that technically speaking Pirates of the Caribbean came after Gladiator and therefore the Pirates are the ones stealing, hehe, but their music is much more prominent in the face of pop culture - and in my ears since I've listened to it a bajillion times - but the disgrace falls on Zimmer and Badelt nonetheless, they basically used the same score twice for two different movies) and I've also read some other angry comments from other music fans that they also copied at least three other composers: Morricone, Holst and Gorecki. 

The film drags on and on, I can't imagine who got the idea to make an extended cut, because it certainly only hurts the compactness of the whole while adding nothing more but runtime. I'm starting to think that Ridley Scott did not make any film worth praise from me, apart from the first Alien. 

P.S.: Oliver Reed is a god, Tommy Flanagan is cool, Joaquin Phoenix looks and sounds just like Jonathan Rhys Meyers in this role, and why do they always make David Hemming's eyebrows so spiky and bushy?

P.P.S.: Oh, so it turns out that he styled his eyebrows like that as a personal choice all the time and not just for movie roles, that's why he has them like this here, in Equilibrium, and else.