The lavishly produced six-hour mini-series
Empire aspires to capture the flavor and grandeur of Rome--or, failing that, the flavor and grandeur of
Gladiator, a highly successful movie
about Rome. Most writers, including Shakespeare, use the assassination of Julius Caesar as a climax;
Empire opens with it, then follows a fictional gladiator named Tyrranus (Jonathan Cake,
Inconceivable) as he protects and substitute-parents Caesar's nephew Octavius (Santiago Cabrera,
Love and Other Disasters), fated to be emperor of Rome. Many have complained about how
Empire plays fast and loose--very, very loose--with historical truth (the series labored over accurate details while running amok with preposterous turns of plot, ranging from Octavius hiding out in a gladiatorial prison to the emperor-to-be's romance with a rosy-lipped vestal virgin). Of course, Shakespeare did his own embellishing and it worked out fine; alas, the writers of
Empire are not our modern Shakespeares. The machinations of Rome play out with cheesy speeches and cornball declamations; even a powerhouse actress like Fiona Shaw (
Empire obeys the Hollywood rule that hot-tempered Romans must only be played by emotionally repressed Brits) can't inject fire into this pompous, ponderous dialogue. The scheming between Octavius and Marc Anthony (Vincent Regan,
Unleashed) briefly harkens back to the genuinely thrilling duplicities of
I, Claudius, but only briefly. Cabrera looks like he'd be more comfortable with the machinations of
The O.C.; Cake musters some dignity but in the last few hours does little but grimace, as if wondering where he'd parked his car. The dvd release has reintegrated some unrated, unaired scenes, but don't get your hopes up. The gladiatorial combat has all the finesse and suspense of locker room buddies snapping towels at each other; the lone orgy scene works hard at fleshpottiness, but nothing kills decadence like effort. There are only two extra features: A typically self-lauding making-of doc, accompanied by a demonstration of how Rome was assembled in a computer.
--Bret Fetzer
