Ridley Scott’s Best Picture-winning historical epic Gladiator is one of the greatest movies of its kind, detailing the bloody vendetta of a Roman general named Maximus against the tyrannical Emperor who ordered his family’s deaths. The film was a huge success upon its release in 2000, picking up several prestigious awards and cementing Ridley Scott as one of the greatest directors of all time. Since then, Gladiator’s lead actor Russell Crowe has appeared in countless other movies that have achieved similar levels of success, but very few have managed to actually live up to Scott’s epic.
Proof of Life was Crowe’s immediate follow-up to Gladiator, and despite a few great action sequences and a strong ensemble cast, the film was somewhat of a disappointment after such a worldwide success. From there, Crowe landed the lead role in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, which secured him a subsequent Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. However, his biggest accomplishment at that point was still Ridley Scott’s greatest movie, Gladiator. It wasn’t until 2003 that Crowe finally landed a project to rival it.
Russell Crowe’s Master & Commander Gave Him A True Gladiator Rival
The Napoleonic Epic Is A Worthy Opponent To Ridley Scott’s Movie
Master & Commander is still considered one of Russell Crowe’s best movies – and for good reason. Peter Weir’s historical action movie follows a British naval captain during the Napoleonic Wars, whose crew is tasked with tracking down and capturing the French privateer Acheron. The film is a brilliant examination of this period in British history, using a strong combination of real-life events and fictionalized characters to paint a vivid portrait of wartime Europe in the late nineteenth century.
There are clearly similarities between Gladiator and Master and Commander, and audiences have long debated which of the two projects is better. While it’s difficult to compete with the pure scope of Scott’s epic, Weir’s film has a much more focused and streamlined narrative that keeps its characters in the spotlight. While Scott uses the sweeping grandeur of the Roman Empire to tell his story, Weir merely uses Napoleonic France as a backdrop for a more personal and intimate story about ambition and power. Whichever of these films audiences prefer ultimately comes down to personal preference.
Ridley Scott’s Own Take On Master & Commander’s Story Didn’t Work As Well
Napoleon Failed Where Master & Commander Succeeded
However, Master & Commander isn’t the only film in the past few decades to explore the Napoleonic Wars – in fact, Ridley Scott followed closely in Weir’s footsteps with his own historical biopic Napoleon. His film is a much larger-scale depiction of the European conflict, detailing Napoleon’s bloody rise to power and the shady politics that allowed him to claim control of the continent. With a strong lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon felt like a perfect companion piece to Master & Commander for those more interested in the general history of the French Emperor.
The film received mixed reviews from critics and general audiences alike, with a fairly underwhelming box office performance to boot
However, Napoleon was nowhere near as successful as Master & Commander. The film received mixed reviews from critics and general audiences alike, with a fairly underwhelming box office performance to boot. Most agreed that Scott’s film lacked the emotional depth of his previous work on Gladiator, which felt like a more cohesive and engaging story than the messy and overambitious biopic. While Scott’s director’s cut of Napoleon made some key improvements to the film, it was ultimately too late to get most audiences on board.
Russell Crowe & Ridley Scott Never Reached Gladiator’s Heights Together, Either
The Pair Have Made Five Movies Together In Total
Thankfully, Gladiator isn’t the only good movie that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe made together. While nothing quite reached the heights of their first collaboration, the pair have worked together on several occasions over the past few decades. Their direct follow-up to Gladiator was A Good Year, an unfortunately tame and underwhelming romantic comedy about an investment banker who inherits a vineyard in France. The pair also collaborated on Body of Lies, a slightly more engaging film about a CIA Agent searching for secrets about a terrorist organization. Sadly, neither project even came close to the heights of Gladiator.
However, in between these two projects, Scott and Crowe struck gold with American Gangster. The film was totally different from anything they’d made together before, but this gripping crime movie was the perfect blend of intricate plot and complex characters that had worked so well in Gladiator. The story followed Denzel Washington’s elusive drug lord Frank Lucas, who is hunted down by Crowe’s ambitious police officer Richie Roberts in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. With excellent performances, a strong screenplay, and plenty of exciting cinematography, American Gangster had all the ingredients that had been missing from their post-Gladiator work.
