By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to one of the heaviest hitting Oscar winners of all time…Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals epic Gladiator!
The Butcher had the very unfortunate experience recently of watching Gladiator II on one of those shitty streaming services that you pay too much for but have to keep in case one day they might actually run something worth watching. Yeah, good luck with that! Anyway, this belated sequel certainly sucked the big one, but its basic ineptitude, bloated running time, non-stop onslaught of crappy CGI chicanery, and Denzel Washington in full-bore ham-bone mode almost had The Butcher longing for its 2000 predecessor starring Big Rusty. Then I actually thought about that for a moment, and realised that Ridley Scott’s stodgy original film is perhaps even worse than its overblown sequel.
If ever there was a case to call a film too big for its own good, then Gladiator is it. It has big sets, big Hollywood stars, a big-name director and an even bigger budget. Yet we are presented with one of the most lightweight films of modern times. For over $US100 million, I want a message. But all we get here is schmaltzy melodrama.
Overlooking the moronic historical inaccuracies that pepper the film, Gladiator still has the filthy stench of one Sir Ridley Scott all over it. He is the most overrated filmmaker of all time, and in Gladiator his indulgent style does nothing but detract from an already banal script. If Scott were a car, he’d be a Hummer: too big and bulky to be taken seriously by anyone except those seriously lacking in the trouser department. Someone needs to take old Ridley aside to explain that, sometimes, less is more.
Obviously, sometimes less is less too, say, when you’re delivering your lines. The late Richard Harris, playing the crumbling emperor Marcus Aurelius, leads the cast in what can only be described as a two-and-a-half-hour whisper-fest. It seems that the word on the Gladiator set was that speaking quietly equals good acting. It doesn’t. It only equals the annoying woman behind you in the cinema constantly turning to her hubby and loudly asking, “What did he say, darl?”
The “star” of the show, Russell Crowe, does nothing here to change my opinion that his performance in 1992’s Romper Stomper was a fluke. Regardless of his role – and there have been a lot of them – there’s a smug self-confidence constantly on Crowe’s face that really rubs me the wrong way; I’d be quite happy never to see him on screen again.
In short, Gladiator promises so much but is as dull as dishwater. And to think of the good that the $100 million budget could have been used for. It seriously riles me…did I mention that my driveway needs paving?
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his bashing of Chopper, his scratching of I’m Not There, his exploding of Interstellar, his take-down of Marvel Studios, and his carve-up of that other cinematic shit-show Citizen Kane.
