The Movie: Sort of a modern day version of 1960's Spartacus, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a violent and gory movie of epic proportions. Everything about this movie is just plain huge. Though largely historically inaccurate, Gladiator is full of great action, awe inspiring special effects, and even a somewhat interesting plot (for an action movie). And I did mention that it was gory, right?

As the movie's tagline goes, this is the story of a general who became a slave who became a gladiator who defied an empire. Rome's greatest general (played by Russell Crowe) becomes a slave after falling out of favor with the new emperor. He quickly gains a big reputation as a gladiator, until one day he gets his revenge against that evil emperor.

And as entertaining as the movie was, one thing I just could not get over was the fact that one of the characters in this movie was named "Falco" and every time they said his name I couldn't help but say "oooooh, rock me Amadeus!" -- which probably annoyed the hell out of the people I was watching this movie with.

But anyway. If you're into gory action movies, this one will certainly satisfy, with just enough plot to keep you from falling asleep over the 2 and a half hours that this movie runs.

The DVD: Gladiator is available as a two disc set, with the movie on one disc, and a boatload of special features on the other. The anamorphic widescreen transfer effectively conveys the "big"-ness of the movie, with bold, bright colors, and great contrast, with full detail being rendered even in the darkest of shadows. There were a couple of issues with the transfer, however, including a bit of gradient stepping, and just a tiny bit too much edge enhancement going on, but nothing too glaringly obvious.

As great as the video transfer is, the DTS ES 6.1 discreet audio is the real star of this show. I can only describe the sound quality as being bold, yet delicate. While delivering sound that mirrors the sheer magnitude of this movie, it does so while conveying each and every tiny detail. An enormous amount of attention was given to the mixing of the surround sound, and it seems that every single sound effect in this movie was very carefully given an exact spot on the soundstage. Truly a work of art the sound on this DVD is.

The only special feature on the first disc is the running audio commentary with the director, DP and editor. The rest of the goodies are on disc 2. Over there you'll find some deleted scenes (with director's commentary), a making-of featurette, a TLC documentary on Roman gladiators, an interview with original score composer Hans Zimmer, story boards, and still photos. You get two theatrical trailers which are fully produced with anamorphic widescreen video transfers and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, plus some TV spots. Finally you get some text-based features, like a production diary written by Spencer Treat Clark (the little kid in the movie), production notes, and cast/crew bios.

All in all, it's a DVD set that does more than justice for this movie... I'm sure the great video and spectacular audio of this disc does more than its fair share of showing off what people's fancy home theater systems can do.