Games of Rome : Les jeux de l'Empire

Well, the DVD's cover does a good (but tricky) job. You think it might be a relatively nice movie shot for TV. Like Helen of Troy, Jason and the argonauts, or Odyssey.

But actually, the only reason to see this movie is for the few beautiful, and half-naked women who try to cope with a terrible director and a really bad script and story based on Ridley Scott's Gladiator. Especially the little girl in the beginning acts really bad. It was quite disappointing. I hope some of the actors get a break in the future.

The movie screams it was very low-budget. They must have used except the forest shots, 5 or 6 scenes, most of them in a dressed back-lot.

The worst mistake (except inaccuracies like amazons in the same era with romans) was that everyone is clean. In that period women didn't look like a Playboy centerfold. And people were dirty-looking. They look extremely sharp. Like they took their furs from the laundry! LOL!

Anyway, as I said, if you pass one the beautiful babes, a Xena episode is far more dramatic and action-packed.

I don't regret for my $2 for the DVD rental though. Even B-movies and first-time actors got to make a living.

If you expect a movie like The Gladiator, or Spartacus you will be very disappointed. The two films I mentioned in the former sentence pay a lot more respect to the historical facts. The voice-over in this film starts with the text: Around 60 AD the Roman empire was at his highest peak both geographical and economical. At the end of the film, a decade of years later on the decline of Rome is announced. But if you don't mind this simplistic lecture you can have a nice time watching for the juicy and well bosomed women (Amazons).

I guessed the film would be terrible, and indeed it was. Really crappy fighting scenes (seems like they were constantly fighting in slow-mo, assuring not to hurt eachother with their toy weapons), terrible acting (did they even retake a single scene? Can't give credit to a single actor), laughable costumes (at least when looking on the romans and the half-naked amazons in such a cold climate).

Don't ask me about the story and don't ask me about the silly clichées. Read a book instead of watching this film, go feed your goldfish. Anything.

The three forces in the universe, in order of strength, are the force that bonds magnets together, the force that bonds protons together, and the force of heroine warrior worshipping energy you feel while watching Amazons & Gladiators, a film by Beyond Films, MBP films and Drotcroft Ltd. Apparently raising enough money to make a movie about heroine warriors takes 3 studios.

Men have long waited for a movie about the Amazons, a movie which portrays Amazons as independant, intelligent, freedom fighting warriors instead of senile monsters like in Land of the Prehistoric Women. This one has good sights of heroines wielding swords, heroines wearing armor, heroines lifting heavy objects, heroines stabbing abusive dictators. If the same movie was made with Jodie Foster, Demi Moore, Ali Larter, or Radha Mitchell, had a bigger budget, a better script, better lighting, better acting it might have been one of the best heroine movies ever.

Unfortunately, there's only acting in the academic sense. The characters wear costumes, read lines, and sometimes move around.

You're better off watching it with the sound off. All the shots are closeups of a tree, building, or fighting ring. There's no wide shot of the Amazon homeland, a Colosseum, or a palace. The weather is consistently dreary. The production is so bad, you might think anyone sitting through this movie was insane but undoubtedly many flat broke, unmarried, male breadwinning gene deprived, SUV impaired men have watched it over and over.

Thank the gods I didn't pay to rent this. Obviously intended as a cheap T&A knockoff of GLADIATOR, this flick is lamer than your average episode of Xena.

A bunch of Amazonian warriors hide in the woods outside Rome, intent on battling the mighty Roman army. They revel in their sisterhood, which would be fine if this was a woman's rights movie instead of a sexploitation flick. The only things viewers are asked to revel in are fur covered push-up bras and midriff bearing outfits (hardly the best protection against the brutal weather). But this isn't a skin flick, my friends. It's a badly scripted, badly acted, B movie. Cleavage is a secondary consideration.

My favorite piece of cheesy dialog, and it's difficult to single out one exchange in a movie rife with it, occurs between the Amazon leader and the newest arrival.

Leader: "Your training begins tomorrow." New arrival: "What training?" Leader: "Amazon training." Need I say more?