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This is a review from the national Norwegian newspaper "VG". Gladiator got three out of six, a very mediocre grade - and none of the actors are mentioned by name.

Huge Format

Gladiator is a gigantic attempt to go back to the HUGE, historic drama from the Roman age; and it is as created for the huge Colosseum cinema in Oslo.

And sure there are lots of things to watch in this history from 180 A.D.; about the general who becomes a slave and then a gladiator.

There are battle scenes with whole armies, there are landscapse from here to eternity. And the Spielberg illusionists at Dreamworks have, just in case, recreated the picture of the antic Rome. Complete with the history's Colosseum. Really impressive!

Revenge

Worse then, with the people in the format: It's supposed to be so huge there too. With the hero who is totally humiliated, but who is driven by revenge and the thought of chopping the head off the mad emperor.

Along the way a thousand other heads are chopped off. And here lies the problem: It is all so overwhelming that most attempts to put some kind of humanity into the epos is colosseic pathetic. Big parts of the dialogue and the proclamation is performed as an old American thirteen-at-a-dozen product. And that doesn't sound right at all.

by JON SELÅS
translated by Kim E.

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