Starring:  Russell Crowe.

I rate this movie watchable not because it's mediocre, but because of the content of the story.  It is wonderfully acted, visually impressive and the story is good, but the movie is real and a struggle and not your typical beautiful escape to the movies.  

The movie trailers for Gladiator make it appear to be almost a sports movie with the athletes being the gladiators.  It's much much deeper than that and is more about the human condition than being a gladiator.  There are many action scenes in the movie, but none were done merely for the sake of throwing in an action scene.  I enjoyed the fact that for so many people dying in this movie, the director rarely let you see the actual violence.  Instead, he cleverly hide and edited the fighting scenes so that you knew what happened, but didn't have to see it blatantly, like the way Saving Private Ryan did.  The story is engaging, but it is hard and human and real.  

Living back in the Roman era was not the luxury that we have.  More than anything, I sat and thought about how lucky we have it to live in the age that we do.  There have been so many dark times before us and rarely do we appreciate all of the luxury we have.  I'll get off my soap box now!!!

Gladiator is a good movie and I would recommend it if your up for a dark movie, I guess I just gave it a Watchable because I wasn't in the mood for that.

   : )