Nothing but a Rocky Wanna-be

As I consider the first four letters in the title of Gladiator a "Rocky" wanna-be whose characters fail to provoke emotions as could Mr. Balboa or Apollo Creed, I ponder whether I am GLAD that I viewed this trash? No, I categorically declare. GLADness would have required obtaining a lobotomy along with my buttered popcorn upon entering the theater.

To complain on an empirical level: If one were to compress all the dialogue that the protagonist, Tom Riley (James Marshall), delivers throughout the film, excluding grunts and growls, one would not fill even the time it takes him to knock out a bloodied opponent in the ring.

Despite a similar handicap, Sly Stallone managed to create a great film, but Marshall fails to charm or enchant in any way that a non-braindead audience would appreciate.

Director Rowdy Herrington attempts to make a statement about poverty and inner strength, but he ultimately delivers a story formed by a cookie-cutter: boy meets girl; boy fights for girl; boy fights for higher morals as well as girl, but, alas, foul play abounds. Most any grade school student could have authored this or at least-accurately predicted the entire film from its first scene.

Tom is the son of a recently deceased mother and reformed drunkard. Hard luck has sent his father and him to the slums of the South Side of Chicago. Riley's introduction to his new home, a plunge compared to his semi-comfortable childhood world, is a gang battle involving knives and near-death in the yard of his high school.

It soon seems that boxing is Tom's only option for lifting his father from the albatross of debts garnered after his wife's death. He does this in a ring with such aptly-named opponents as Black Death.

Soon, Tom is drawn into the amateur boxing world by a sleazy Fagintype played by Robert Loggia and a money-grubbing ex-fighter turned promoter (Brian Dennehy). Men like Tom are treated as cannon-fodders to fuel their lucrative gambling empire.

For sheer parallelism I will criticize "Gladiator" on a film-appreciation level: The cinematography is childish. For example, after two KOd bodies are strewn across the ring, the camera, emulating tactics delineated in the World Wrestling Federation hand-book, pans down on them from above. Audience laughter undoubtedly follows this most unsubtle ploy.

There is some emotion here despite the characters' failure to evoke empathy, but it is mostly a byproduct of gore and disfigured faces. For instance, when one boxer emerges comatose from a knockout, the audience cannot help but bemoan the unfairness of the underground, inner-city boxing circuits. One hopes that such barbarity is purely fictitious.

Mostly, the boxing approximates the pseudo fighting of the WWF. Evil pugilists void of ethics kick their opponents in the head after a knockout or use tactics that even a hard-core boxing libertarian would deem unfair.

"Gladiator" should win an Oscar if they are awarded based on "number of broken noses and two-dimensional characters" per film. Otherwise, the Academy should grant it a consolation prize, for despite its multiple flaws, at least it reminds us of "Rocky," and that, unlike "Gladiator," is a "best-film" worth remembering.

Gladiator Directed By Rowdy Herrington Starring James Marshall and Robert Loggia.