Nero (2004)

Fantastic!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

and not only. a film who creates one of many Nerone's portraits. not extraordinary but decent. only sin - the fear of Hans Matheson to explore new solutions for create his role more than copy of other emperor's representations. but he does a beautiful role, not real profound but honest, powerful and realistic. like many historical movies, the accuracy is not the best point and, in many scenes, Nerone seems be only sketch. but it is a good choice for an evening after work day, as mixture of history and crumbs of fairy tale, remembering Quo Vadis and the representation of the Roman emperor in different novels and in cinema. sure, the stereotypes are not the inspired ingredients and the story of Nerone could be more a story "ad usum Delphini" but the result is far to be bad.

"Nero" as the title of the movie is in Germany is a another attempt to show one of the most interesting Roman emperors, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known as Nero. Although this attempt at least tried to show a more historic accurate Nero than the amusing but completely fictitious Nero Peter Ustinov played in "Quo Vadis!" it still is a major failure. And to those IMDb-commentators who still believe that Sueton and Tacitus propaganda is true, please read a book about Nero that was published less than 20 years ago. Nero did NOT burn Rome, this is proved! He did not murder Britannicus. He did not torture, kill and maim for pleasure, he was the first emperor who BANNED the gladiator fights. The movie still shows a lot of mistakes, errors and is by the way made in a really cheap style, especially the sets were cheap and unconvincing, the palace looking like some villa, the city itself looked like..well like a cheap set. The acting was between good and sub-par, the music nearly insignificant and the movie soon deteriorated after Nero became emperor to a rushed, bad edited mess without any clear narrative structure. So there still is the potential for an epic biography of Nero that shows the true Nero, who was one of the best emperors who ruled Rome, despite the lies of Sueton et al.

OK, we all know that historical movies are full of inexactitudes, the list is so long, Troy was a disaster, and Brad Pitt acting was horrible, any movies done on Joan of arc was to laugh about, and so on and so on, so why review them pointing on how bad they are with respecting the real story? Sure I don't retain this movie as being Oscar material (then again I saw some winners worst than this movie), but it was entertaining, the set and costume were nice...The only shame was that it was entirely voiced over even for the English speaking actors, and I never get used to hear somebody familiar speak with another voice......

I cannot comprehend how this picture was allowed to be made. It is mostly, if not completely, inaccurate so much so that the main character does not even resemble how history has him look physically. This movie made me go on the internet and go through my books to make sure I remember Nero's personality correctly. For God's sake, I have a book that lists Nero as one of the most evil person's of the world and the movie made me feel bad for him. I must say Aggrapina's character seemed close to my understanding of her, both physically and psychologically. Although, the actors all did a good job, the movie was terrible and I'm sure I will not watch any others made by this sorry team.