“You Sold me Queer Giraffes!”

Right, thanks to a Norwegian dental surgeon that can quite frankly chew on my testicles, posts for the foreseeable future will be erratic. Now need a tooth removed, and until it happens I shall be in a fair amount of pain, even with all the painkillers under the sun propping up my innards. However, I am in a good enough condition to write, so write I shall, until the need for sleep takes over. About twenty minutes from now then.

So, already there are many films on the list that require a watch – Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Kings Speech to name but a few. Not to mention the abundant list of titles filling up my shelving. So, to the next one.

Gladiator

Right, now the details of this one are pretty basic – Roman General is betrayed by the Emperor‘s Son, becomes a Gladiator and seeks his revenge. I’m assuming anyone reading this blog has a basic knowledge of film and as such has seen this film at least twice, so let’s move on as you know the film already.

I really enjoyed it the first time. Not so much this time.

Now it may be that I am under dental duress, or it may be that I have tended to only review films I enjoy and thus I am feeling a little harsh towards this one, but I found certain elements of Gladiator a little bit irritating this time round. Take for example the chronic Englishness of it all. Now I know this is me being ultra-picky and I can already hear the cries of “Ben-Hur was in English too!” but Ben-Hur was made by American film-makers who as far as I’m concerned don’t know any better. They are Roman, let the language at least be of that time or something like it. However, like I said, that’s incredibly picky.

Something less picky is Joaquin Phoenix. I remember some time ago I reviewed Buffalo Soldiers and I remember labelling him average. I stand by that. He brought nothing special to Gladiator either. He was okay when he got bitter and whiney when people were picking on Caesar (The lone native word used in this whole film other than ‘Praetorian’) but other than that Phoenix was bog standard. And get this, and I’ll put it in italics so it seems like a whisper…

So was Russell Crowe…

Now I’ve heard the new stories about how he flipped when someone labelled his accent in Robin Hood as ‘a bit Irish’, and in certain placed in that film I could agree, thing is he does it in this as well. Only once or twice, but still, he needs to talk to a language coach, specifically the one that taught Johnny Depp English.

Anyway, Irishness aside, Crowe was not special in this film. All I got from it was him waving a big stick about and shouting a few memorable lines that were probably put in big capital letters on the script so Ridley Scott could think “Ah, memorable line” but Crowe took as “Ah, Shoutey Shoutey”.He was okay, passable, nothing more. Hell, Mark Strong would have been better. There. It’s been said. Fighting words.

Also, I must admit that for a big budget film made by an English director, some of the camerawork and special effects are, quite frankly, piss poor. The instances when Crowe is lying down and it looks like he is moving? No. It looks tacky, and no justification can explain that away. Also, The Ridley’s use of slow or distorted motion? Pointless. From a technical standpoint these two little problems really drag this film down in my eyes. It doesn’t ruin it, but it detracts from what is otherwise a gorgeous looking movie.

Now going back to the acting, don’t get me wrong, this film is really good. Rarely does the Ridley let us British audiences down. He didn’t with this one, it was a corker. But not because of Crowe or Phoenix. Lord no, they were carried.

Step forward (or shuffle forward if you’re dead) Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Richard Harris, Djimon (Motherf**kin’) Hounsou, David Hemmings, and Connie Nielsen. Were it not for that casting, this film would be utter shit. Now I am well aware that of all of the British elements of that supporting cast, Hemmings, Harris and Reed are all dead and Jacobi may as well be, but if it weren’t for their rampant pessimism Crowe would have looked like a Roman crackhead saying “there was once a dream that was Rome”. English negativity made this film great I say! In all seriousness, Reed was excellent as an ex-Gladiator turned trainer (Giraffes. Enough Said.), Harris was awesome and made Phoenix look ten times better than he is. Hemmings? Hells. Yeah. Jacobi was also very steady and at times wonderfully mis-trusting and bitter. After all, he is British. Add to that Connie ‘I also made Phoenix look ten time better than he is’ Nielsen and The Djimon, who aside from The Island and Push never does a bad movie, and we got ourselves a winner.

Now, going along the vein of wanting to watch films that I have never seen before in the hope that maybe I’ll find one I don’t like, the next film on my list is The Happening.