GladiatorMovie Reviews

Gifts + Promos

Fandango Gift Card

Give the gift of movies with Fandango Bucks Gift Certificates! Design your own gift card, or choose from our collection.

Avengers Gift Cards

Superhero fans! Don’t miss out on these Limited Edition Avengers gift cards!

Need Help?
Go
Avg. Critic Score: 64 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
15 Iffy for 15+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 91
    Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

    What matters for today's hero is the good fight, and Gladiator KOs us with a doozy. Read full review

  • 90
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    Glorious, a colossus of rousing action and ferocious fun. Read full review

  • 80
    Washington Post | Desson Thomson

    One extended guilty pleasure. Read full review

  • 80
    Variety | Todd McCarthy

    John Mathieson's widescreen cinematography is magnificent, and the pacing across 2½ hours is well modulated. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    At 2 1/2 hours, Gladiator is a long ride, but it doesn't drag. Read full review

  • 63
    USA Today | Susan Wloszczyna

    Instead of the heat of humanity, what lingers on in the mind is the cool of the computerized effects. Read full review

  • 60
    The New York Times | A.O. Scott

    Grandiose and silly. Read full review

  • 60
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

    Like an aging athlete who knows how to husband strength and camouflage weaknesses, it makes the most of what it does well and hopes you won't notice its limitations. Read full review

  • 50
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are. Read full review

  • 30
    Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

    Friends, Washingtonians, countrymen, I come not to praise Gladiator but to bury it. Read full review

View more reviews for Gladiator on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Really excellent but really violent Oscar winner.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this is a very violent movie. A woman and child are brutally tortured and killed (mostly off-screen). People are sliced up, burned, and crucified. There are references to rape and incest.
  • Families can talk about why it is that people are drawn to watch other people battle and what the appeal is of movies like this and full contact sports. Notice that, like Odysseus in the land of the Cyclops, Maximus will not use his name until he has done something he can be proud of. Why didn't Commodus just have him killed? Why did Commodus (a little like the WWF's Vince McMahon) decide to participate in the combat? What does it mean to "smile back" at death? Compare the lists of virtues claimed by Caesar and Commodus. Which are the most important? One of the movie's great challenges is making its world seem very different to us without making it impossible to identify with the characters. The story is told without any sense of irony or distance. Some older kids will have some good thoughts on how that is accomplished.
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Not an issue
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Very violent, many bloody battle scenes, many deaths. Main character's wife and child are burned to death offscreen.
  • sex false3 Sex: References to rape and incest.
  • language false0 Language: Not an issue
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false0 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Not an issue
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

Facebook Movie Fans

Fan Fandango on Facebook