Gladiator

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. "Gladiator" is one of the first movies I remember watching and being completely enthralled by it. I didn’t even understand the political story, I just liked to see Russell Crowe kick some serious butt. As I got older I watched the movie again and again and after every viewing I find more things about the story that entice me beyond the epic battles that Ridley Scott was able to produce.

            A powerful, and exhausted Roman General, Maximus (Russell Crowe), who has just successfully ended a war after twelve years under Ceasar Augustus (Richard Harris), is offered the job of Ceasar after Augustus dies. Even though Maximus doesn’t want the job, the Ceasar’s son, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is extremely jealous and ends up killing his father so that he can become the next Ceasar before anyone figures out that the job was actually passed to someone else. This movie actually makes politics very exciting and interesting to watch. The delicate issue of whether or not the power should be held by Ceasar or the senate is played throughout this film and actually is entertaining. At the same time Maximus is a slave who is forced to fight for his life for pure entertainment. As he fights his way into popularity through the crowd he gains their approval and limited power of the Ceasar through the mob.

            Russell Crowe is at his best in this movie. Even today he is known for this role. A single man fights because he has to, it is his duty to fight and command in the beginning of the movie. After he is condemned to death, and his family is murdered, he chooses death over life but death will not take him. Not yet. Then he fights for survival in the ring as a gladiator. Once he realizes there is power in the mob, he fights for the chance to get revenge on the one who killed his family. Fighting is a constant theme in this movie but the reasons and methods keep changing. Commodus is constantly fighting a political battle against the senate and a mind battle against his family and himself. He fights his father in the beginning because he wants to be Ceasar. He fights the senators because they aren’t respecting him in the way that he feels he should be. He fights with his sister to get into bed with him so she could bare his child. He fights with himself trying to scheme a way into the favor of the people of Rome. There are so many ways that people in this movie are fighting and they all have different reasons and end goals. Even though fighting is constantly looked down upon in our society this movie shows that there are times for fighting. Even if it doesn’t look like the normal fighting, it has its uses. There is a time for peace and a time for war.  It just depends on how bad you will fight for peace.