Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Gladiator (1992)

Director: Rowdy Herrington

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Herrington follows up the state-of-the-art violence of Road House with a leaner, more controlled tale of back-street boxing in Chicago. Blackmailed by corrupt promoter Horn (Dennehy), white schoolboy boxer Tommy Riley (Marshall) is forced into a fight scene where cheating is normal. Horn bills Tommy as 'The Great White Hope', but Tommy's motivation - paying off his father's gambling debts - hardly sets him alongside 'hungry' white champions of the past. For his black opponents, on the other hand, their fists are their only passport out of the ghetto. It's this desperation, and the racial undercurrent of black versus white, that Horn is keen to exploit. Marshall makes a promising feature debut; and Herrington, pushing beyond the expected triumph-of-the-underdog clichés, underpins the crowd-pleasing Rocky-style fight action with some unobtrusive social comment and confident visual storytelling.

Author: NF 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Rowdy Herrington

Producer: Steve Roth, Frank Price

Cast: James Marshall, Cuba Gooding Jr, Brian Dennehy, Robert Loggia, Ossie Davis, John Heard, Jon Seda, Cara Buono, Lance Slaughter full cast

Genre(s): Action/Adventure

Duration: 102 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.