| 100 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
It's a stunning Roman triumph.
|
| 100 |
Film.com
Ted Fry
It's that very rare feeling that you're settling into a movie whose individual elements are so finely attuned they fuse into a singular construct of pure entertainment.
|
| 91 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It lives up to the hype. Gladiator has its creaky moments, but it delivers a particular kind of visceral historical spectacle that movie audiences haven't seen in decades.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
What matters for today's hero is the good fight, and Gladiator KOs us with a doozy.
|
| 90 |
Rolling Stone
Glorious, a colossus of rousing action and ferocious fun.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
If there's a soft spot in your heart for the sword-&-sandal epic -- and from the star rating above, I think you can guess where I stand -- then you'll swoon with giddy delight over Gladiator.
|
| 88 |
New York Post
An exhilarating, sweeping epic that begs to be seen on the largest possible screen.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Has the kind of super-cinematic qualities and bravura acting that make up for almost anything.
|
| 84 |
Mr. Showbiz
Combining a seething physicality with enough weary nobility and tightly checked rage for a dozen wronged heroes, (Crowe) provides the movie's vital center of gravity without looming over his co-stars.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
One extended guilty pleasure.
|
| 80 |
Time
Quite a good movie--a big, fat, rousing, intelligent, daring, retro, many-adjective-requiring entertainment.
|
| 80 |
Variety
John Mathieson's widescreen cinematography is magnificent, and the pacing across 2½ hours is well modulated.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Examiner
As formulaic, but occasionally outré multiplex-bound behemoths go, Gladiator is a foaming beast.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
At 2 1/2 hours, Gladiator is a long ride, but it doesn't drag.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Lacks emotional depth and sweep -- but the movie still delivers the type of rousing, large-scale adventure that marked the best films of its kind
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
Frequently gory, often talky, almost always watchable, never quite thrilling, Gladiator is a cold and big film that mixes solid acting with cheesy digital effects and sweaty action with stultifying chatter.
|
| 70 |
Newsweek
Andrea C. Basora
The fight scenes are dynamic, intricately choreographed, and downright exciting.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
The heroism and the tigers and the epic grandeur all leave behind the flavor of cynicism.
|
| 70 |
TNT RoughCut
What elevates Gladiator to the near-greatness it occasionally achieves is the performance of Russell Crowe as Maximus.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
The warm humanizing element in all the cool stuff is Crowe.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
It ends with the corniest convention of all: an absurd mano-a-mano between good and evil.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
Instead of the heat of humanity, what lingers on in the mind is the cool of the computerized effects.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
It epitomizes the kind of high-profile bloodshed we now expect to herald the hazy, lazy, blockbuster-fixated days of summer.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Like an aging athlete who knows how to husband strength and camouflage weaknesses, it makes the most of what it does well and hopes you won't notice its limitations.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
The script by producer David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson is serviceable but not exactly inspired.
|
| 60 |
LA Weekly
Filled with brilliant filmmaking and features outstanding performances, but it's neither profound enough nor pop enough to be great -- it's mournful, serious, beautiful and, finally, pointless.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
The digital animation is far more evident here than in "The Phantom Menace."
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
Grandiose and silly.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Scott's filmmaking is as blunt and bullying as the mayhem it portrays.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
Well, it's better than "The Phantom Menace."
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
It's a loud, obnoxious, and pleasant-enough entertainment, but hardly the soaring tale of one man's struggle that it was so clearly envisioned to be.
|
| 50 |
Dallas Observer
The soul of Gladiator is made sluggish by a maddening lack of suspense.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
For all its grandeur, Gladiator is a canned experience, a film that flails around awkwardly trying to find a reason to exist, or at least a compelling story to tell.
|
| 40 |
Slate
Gladiator's combination of grim sanctimony and drenching, Dolby-ized dismemberings left me appalled.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
Friends, Washingtonians, countrymen, I come not to praise Gladiator but to bury it.
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