Gladiator is an action/political thriller about a general in the Roman Army Maximus (Russell Crowe) whose many victories has made him a hero to the Emperor. But when the Emperor's son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) kills his own father he orders Maximus and his family killed. Maximus escapes but not in time to save his family. Severely injured in the escape he is picked up as a slave by a group that do not know who he is. At this point he is sold as a gladiator to Proximo (Oliver Reed). He goes on to become a famous gladiator and he goes to Rome to fight in the Gladiator games and seek his revenge on Comodus who is trying to win over the people with the games and weaken the senate. When he finds out that Maximus is alive he has to find a way to kill him without having the people turn on him.
After watching it again it still didn't win me over. For some reason I just can't seem to care about Maximus. I just think Russell Crowe was not very convincing and think his performance was overrated. It seemed to me that a lot of people thought he should have won the previous year for The Insider and since he lost they gave it to him this year. Joaquin Phoenix was just annoying and always whining about not being loved he really didn't come across as a real menacing bad guy. Considering I love action movies this movie should have been one I loved but it did nothing for me and I never understood why it was praised so much. Winning 5 awards including Best Actor, Special Effects, Costumes, and Sound but losing Best Director and Best Screenplay making it one of the few movies to win Best Picture and lose the other two. And maybe that says something that it lost Best Screenplay since I like movies that are well written and the two movies that won Best Screenplay (Traffic for Adapted and Almost Famous or Original) were two of my favorite movies of the year. Maybe since it was after the big 2000 election controversy voters felt the political aspect of the movie was more relatable.
Traffic was the other big winner with 4 wins for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Editing. Stephen Sodeberg was nominated for Best Director for two movies Traffic and Erin Brockovich making him one of only three people to be nominated for Director against himself. Both movies were also nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.
My favorite movie of the year was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a foreign language action/love story. No foreign language movie has ever won Best Picture and I was hopping that this would be the first but I guess voters felt that if it won Best Foreign Language Movie it shouldn't win Best Picture. But the visuals and the story were just amazing and breathtaking. It was the first foreign language film that I saw in the theatre and I am glad I did. The biggest snub in my opinion was Almost Famous which did win Best Original Screenplay but should have been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. It also should have won Best Supporting Actress for Kate Hudson who was amazing in that movie as Penny Lane.
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