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| Category | Drama/Action | Disc One:
Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Audio & Animation Audio Commentary - Ridley Scott (Director), John Mathieson (Director of Photography) & Petro Scalia (Editor) DTS Piano Trailer Disc Two:
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| Rating |  |
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| Year Released | 2000 | ||
| Running Time | 148:34 Minutes | ||
| RSDL/Flipper | Disc One: RSDL (73:23)
Disc Two: Dual Layer |
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| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region | 2,4 | Director | Ridley Scott |
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Distributor |
Columbia Tristar Home Video |
Starring | Russell Crowe
Joaquin Phoenix Connie Nielsen Derek Jacobi Djimon Hansou Oliver Reed Richard Harris |
| Case | Double Soft Brackley | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | Hans Zimmer
Lisa Gerard |
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| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None | English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384
Kb/s)
English (DTS 5.1, 754 Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0  ,
192 Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 |
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| Macrovision | Yes | Smoking | No |
| Subtitles | English
Dutch Polish Bulgarian Hungarian Icelandic Swedish Norwegian Croatian Hebrew Turkish Danish Hindu Finnish Greek Arabic Czech English Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary |
Annoying Product Placement | No (see plot summary) |
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
The film begins with a basic explanation of its setting, both geographically and chronologically, before we are introduced to our valiant hero, a General who goes by the name of Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe). Maximus believes in one thing, other than the fact that dirt is easier to clean from one's hands than blood: strength with honour. Without either of those things, he is nothing, and while this might normally translate into a paper-thin or even soulless character, it works astoundingly well in this case. Maximus and his legions, as well as his faithful canine, go into battle with the last of the Germanic tribal armies, the people the Roman Empire have been at war with for several years. The battle is won by the Romans with massive casualties on both sides, including the aforementioned dog, while the current Caesar, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), looks on from a distant vantage point. Marcus commends Maximus on yet another job well done before the arrival of his two children: his son, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), and his daughter, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Lucilla is a strong, virtuous woman, whereas Commodus is a snivelling, scheming troll whose paranoia could bring down an empire. Shortly after the battle, Marcus informs Maximus and Commodus that the latter will not be his successor as the emperor of Rome, with the title instead being passed on to the former. In a fit of rage and disappointment, Commodus murders his father and claims the throne of Rome for himself, while ordering Maximus' death. Maximus is quick enough to escape his would-be executioners, but not quick enough to save his wife and son from being murdered by Commodus' legions. Now, when you make a film about this sort of event and how it affects the hero, there are a few basic choices in plot development one can make. The first, and most obvious choice is what I call the Rambo syndrome, where the hero just screams and grunts before single-handedly cutting down hundreds upon hundreds of his enemies. The other two options involve depicting the hero as being angered and thirsty for revenge, or depicting the hero as merely wanting to crawl into the ground and die so that he will not have to deal with the loss and shame anymore. Director Ridley Scott and actor Russell Crowe obviously thought a combination of the latter two would work best, and this is a choice that they are both to be commended for. Crowe does such a convincing and moving job of this that I cannot recall so much as a facial movement that wouldn't be consistent with how I would behave in a similar situation.
From this point, we see Commodus deal with his opponents in the Roman senate while Maximus works as a gladiator after being found by slave traders. It is here that we are introduced to gladiator-turned-trainer Proximo (Oliver Reed), as well as a group of fellow gladiators such as Juba (Djimon Hounsou). Before long, this troupe of gladiators are contracted to fight in Rome during a five-month festival of games, chiefly organized by Commodus in order to divert the attention of the citizenry away from his weak leadership. After a series of matches that the gladiators are not meant to win, but win anyway because of Maximus' skilled leadership, Commodus is less than pleased to discover that Maximus is alive, well, and not a happy man. From there, the film revolves around the individual conflicts of the various characters: Maximus just wants to reach Elysium and rejoin his family, Proximo wants to make money, fellow gladiators like Juba just want to live long enough to be freed, Commodus wants to hold onto his power any way that he can, and Lucilla wants to remove her brother from power without endangering herself and her son. The question of whether Maximus can bring Commodus to justice is a moot one in comparison to the question of whether he can do so and remain honourable in his own eyes. I won't spoil anything about how the film ends, except to say that I rarely feel so truly satisfied by the ending of a film, especially when I found the rest of it to be so enjoyable.
Words fail me when describing how much I enjoyed this film when I first saw it, except maybe for the following statement: if a piece of vapid drivel like Titanic can equal Ben Hur's record Oscar haul, then any failure on Gladiator's part to better it will only confirm that the Oscars aren't worth the gold they are plated with. Indeed, this film is currently sitting comfortably in the Internet Movie Database's top 250 films of all time, with the average user rating of 8.3 stars keeping the film at number 70, as of November 9, 2000. I have long had a personal list of favourite films, many of which various directors have tried and failed to imitate: Robocop, the Star Wars saga, Tron, Mad Max, The Thing, and They Live, just to name the most prominent examples. Gladiator may count itself very highly among this list, maybe not because the plot is especially original, but rather because very few, if any, films execute this premise better. Grab yourself a bowl of home-made popcorn, fire up your DVD player, and prepare yourself for performances that have granted virtual screen immortality, especially for Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix (I had no idea he could act this well before I saw the film).
The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and it is 16x9 Enhanced. Razor-sharp isn't complimentary enough to describe the clarity of this transfer, with details leaping off the screen at the viewer faster than it is physically possible to absorb. Some shots during the battles are softly focused and pan wildly, but there is no additional loss in resolution at these moments, and they enhance the realism of the battles in spite of the whiny complaints of some critics. The shadow detail of the film is very good, as much of the film was deliberately shot with low lighting for artistic reasons, and you still get to see everything that the makers intended you to see. Low-level noise and film grain are foreign terms to this transfer, which looks clean enough to create the look of a stage performance.
The colour saturation of this transfer is, in a word, beautiful. Most of this film consists of shades of brown, with the occasional dash of blue and red thrown in for good measure. All colours in this film are handled beautifully with not so much as a hint of bleeding, undersaturation, oversaturation, or misregistration. It is hard for me to believe that I am viewing a series of still images when I watch this DVD. Every time I paused the disc to make a note or refill the glass I drank from, the resultant image looked more like an oil painting than an image from a video stream.
MPEG artefacts were not overly apparent in this transfer, in spite of the fact that this disc is as full as you can possibly get without the threat of abundant macro-blocking or pixelization. There was one shot in Marcus Aurelius' quarters where some curtains exhibited a touch of posterization, but this is being really picky. Aliasing is a mild problem in this transfer, with the first shot of the Coliseum containing a small amount of shimmer that wasn't too distracting. These artefacts are a pity because there's only four of them in the entire picture, but they are still just barely noticeable enough to very slightly downgrade my rating of this transfer. I was on the lookout for telecine wobble during the titles and credits, as the superimposed texts stating locations wobbled dreadfully during the theatrical exhibitions of this film. Thankfully, they were as steady as a rock on this DVD. The interpositive that was used to create this transfer must have been in pristine condition, because I noticed maybe a handful of flecks in the entire picture, and the ones that were present were so small as to almost be non-existent.
This disc is appropriately presented in the RSDL format, with the layer change taking place during Chapter 14, at 73:23. This is after Lucilla gives Commodus a "tonic", and thus in the middle of a conversation, but the layer change is brief enough that I suspect owners of players that negotiate layer changes more quickly than the SD-2109 will not even notice.
Before I continue, I'd like to dispel a certain myth that has been prevalent as of late. DTS is not a magic cure-all for the compression problems that have arisen from the need to place video and audio data on the one disc. Dolby Digital and DTS have one thing in common, in that they are not lossless compression methods. In other words, when a soundtrack that has been compressed in either format is reconstructed from the compressed form, it won't be the same as it was before it was compressed. The DTS format simply handles the losses in a different manner. Having said that much, however, both of the soundtracks on this disc are quite simply the best examples of the codecs at their best that you are likely to hear for some time.
The dialogue is clear and easy to understand in both
soundtracks, although the greater surround and low-frequency activity
of the DTS soundtrack meant that some quietly-delivered lines required
a little more effort to understand. Only a handful of
lines in the film are affected by this problem, but they are affected
just enough to become a distraction. Given that this film relies
heavily on its dialogue, and the soundtrack was originally mixed in
such a way as to reflect this, any differences between the two
soundtracks in terms of understanding the dialogue are going to be
very minor by nature, and the same problem is present to a
slightly lesser degree in the Dolby Digital soundtrack. There were
no problems with audio sync at any time, at least not
subjectively.
The score music in this film is credited to Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard, and I can imagine there being some confusion as to who is responsible for how much of the music. It is quite simply one of the best thematic scores you are likely to hear outside of John Williams' legendary catalogue. It is perfectly matched to every scene it appears in, with the appropriate waltz-like sound during the battle scenes, and the appropriate funereal air during the slow, reflective moments. Being that I already own the score music on CD, I was curious to see what sort of effect the PAL speedup would have. In context of the rest of the soundtrack, the speedup is really of little consequence, being somewhat hard to really notice, and certainly less objectionable than 3:2 pulldown artefacts when the amount of camera movement in this film is taken into account.
The surround presence in both soundtracks is quite powerful, with all manner of sounds being poured through every channel, creating an immersive sound field that doesn't diminish when the battles stop. Even when the only noticeable sounds in the film are two people talking, both soundtracks feature some reverberation and music going through the rears. The main difference between the two soundtrack formats is that the sound effects and music are louder in the DTS soundtrack, as is the dialogue. Both soundtracks, however, will immerse you in this film so deeply that you'll never want to climb out again. The subwoofer also handles the two soundtracks in a different manner, with the subwoofer being more active, and producing more finely-detailed sounds, during the DTS soundtrack. This is not to say that it isn't fully integrated into the film with the Dolby Digital soundtrack, but you will notice that the DTS soundtrack emphasizes fidelity over compactness.
This Easter Egg can be accessed by pressing the up key to highlight the rhino on the first storyboard for the rhino fight sequence. When the Enter key is pressed, a menu titled "What Happened To The Rhino?" is displayed. Aside from an explanation of what the sequence is about, this menu explains why the sequence was never filmed, and presents the options of reading the script for the sequence, viewing a seven-second snippet of test footage, or going back to the storyboards. The test footage is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1, without 16x9 Enhancement. There is no soundtrack for this footage.
[Addendum March 22, 2001: Having just taken delivery of a copy of the R1 Gladiator DVD, I can confirm the following. The R1 version is packaged in a dual opaque Amaray, similar to the Transparent Amaray that Fox normally use to package two disc sets. This might seem preferable to the shoddy Soft Brackley that the R4 is packaged in, but with the way the booklet constantly folds against the spokes that hold the flap for the second disc in place, I can assure you that it isn't. The R1 version suffers from significantly more aliasing artefacts, and the 3:2 pull-down effect in the slow-motion combat sequences makes them ever so slightly more jerky. In spite of all the recent arguments, and the absence of some features, the R4 disc is also slightly better in terms of transfer quality.]
The video quality is simply brilliant, although it is a pity that it is denied reference status by three trivial occurrences of aliasing and a single trivial occurrence of posterization. Those of you who are not as fussy might beg to differ.
The audio quality is delightful, both in the Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks, although the DTS soundtrack is the winner by a nose. I consider both of these soundtracks to be reference material, although your opinion may differ slightly.
You want extras? You get an entire disc full of interesting extras here, and although the fifty-minute historical documentary is a little cheesy in execution, there isn't a single extra here that I would leave until last.
| Video |   |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
© Dean McIntosh (my
bio
sucks... read it anyway)
November 11, 2000
Amended January 28, 2001
Amended March 22, 2001
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| DVD | Toshiba SD-2109, using S-video output |
| Display | Samsung CS-823AMF (80 cm), 16:9 mode/4:3 mode, using composite and S-video inputs |
| Audio Decoder | Built In (Amplifier) |
| Amplification | Sony STR-DE835 |
| Speakers | Yamaha NS-45 Front Speakers, Philips PH931SSS Rear Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Active Subwoofer |