I have two advantages in watching this movie - I love silly stuff and I never read the Lindsey Davis books (read them afterward, liked the movie MUCH more - so there).
While at times fairly campy, tAoT is a straightforward mystery movie set in ancient Rome. Marcus Didius Falco, a proto-private investigator (and perpetually broke bill-dodger) is hired to find a lost boy, who turns out to be both dead and related to one of the most powerful men in Rome. In true hard-boiled style, Falco is warned off the case, but it becomes personal once people start to make attempts to bump him off.
One of my favorite parts is the whole subplot with the gladiator - Falco tries to collect a debt owed him by a senator and gets paid off with the last thing he could possibly want - a gladiator named Justus, who is so famous he can't walk down a street without being mobbed by fans. There's also a female gladiator, captured in Brittania, who becomes the focus of a plot to kill the emperor.
If you can get past Bryan Brown's accent (picture this in Australian tones - "Oh, yeah, Justus fights like a god - he's a regular Mars made flesh."), he's actually fine for the part - being a perfectly-cast scalawag-type. After all, nearly everybody else in the cast has a British accent, so what's the big deal?
Overall, it's a really fun, occasionally historical, often hysterical, movie full of adorable characters (like Falco's assistant-cum-secretary-cum-bathhouse attendant Niobe "Men... they see a Nubian, they think they own her.").
And there's also a really tame orgy scene.
While at times fairly campy, tAoT is a straightforward mystery movie set in ancient Rome. Marcus Didius Falco, a proto-private investigator (and perpetually broke bill-dodger) is hired to find a lost boy, who turns out to be both dead and related to one of the most powerful men in Rome. In true hard-boiled style, Falco is warned off the case, but it becomes personal once people start to make attempts to bump him off.
One of my favorite parts is the whole subplot with the gladiator - Falco tries to collect a debt owed him by a senator and gets paid off with the last thing he could possibly want - a gladiator named Justus, who is so famous he can't walk down a street without being mobbed by fans. There's also a female gladiator, captured in Brittania, who becomes the focus of a plot to kill the emperor.
If you can get past Bryan Brown's accent (picture this in Australian tones - "Oh, yeah, Justus fights like a god - he's a regular Mars made flesh."), he's actually fine for the part - being a perfectly-cast scalawag-type. After all, nearly everybody else in the cast has a British accent, so what's the big deal?
Overall, it's a really fun, occasionally historical, often hysterical, movie full of adorable characters (like Falco's assistant-cum-secretary-cum-bathhouse attendant Niobe "Men... they see a Nubian, they think they own her.").
And there's also a really tame orgy scene.