I greatly enjoyed this film: the individual performances, the storyline, the impressive opening battle, the lead actor’s physicality and his quiet scenes with his mother, and great fight choreography. It took a few moments after the film ended for me to appreciate Ridley Scott’s somewhat wicked sense of humor. His baboons looked unnatural, very nightmarish. The rhinoceros looked more realistic, but more oversized than any animal I’ve ever seen and with a front horn that was gigantic! And when the shark fin poked out of the water in the colosseum, I found myself amused.

I was underwhelmed by the soundtrack. Harry Gregson-Williams had no memorable themes in this movie that an epic of this magnitude deserves. Only the music during the end credits were beautiful, but that was an expanded version of Hans Zimmer’s original score, so it didn’t really count. But the overall quality of the entire movie still was incredibly entertaining.