Gladiator

One cannot help but to get lost in the action and adventure of this film.  It starts out faced paced.  Your heart and adrenaline are racing as your eyes are fixated on the blood and gore of battle scenes and singular combat.  Personally, I got lost in the characters themselves, especially Maximus.  I couldn't help but to want to be just like him, to command and lead an army and to have the respect and admiration.  For about two and a half hours I felt invincible and vulnerable at the same time.  I appreciate movies like this one, especially for its ability to provide an escape from reality for a brief moment in my life.

Gladiator is a great example of a films use of theme and focus by centralizing the central concern of the movie on it's title.  The character Maximus, although humble and honorable, lives life day by day not knowing if it'll be his last.  He lives the gladiator's life as a soldier and general in the Roman army and as a captured slave condemned to gladiator games until he dies.  This focus on character is proven when the Roman Emperor Commudus asks who he is and is given the response, "my name is Gladiator."

I couldn't help but notice that the one thing keeping Maximus alive and full of hope was his family.  This is where the focus on plot unfolds.  When that was taken away, he really had nothing to live for, but to finish one task.  That task was to give the power back to the Roman people, which was given to him upon the late emperor Marcus Aurelius' death.  The one thing that gave him the opportunity to fulfill this task was the one thing that enslaved him.  It's quite peculiar that fulfilling this task also meant exacting revenge on the person who took his family and killed the only father figure in his life.  This struggle for human dignity between Commudus and Maximus ultimately resulted in their deaths.  And, in death Maximus achieved the ultimate task: giving the power back to the people and meeting his family in the afterlife.