Rome: The Complete Series
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DVD details
Actor: Kevin McKidd, Ray StevensonBrand: HBO Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Box set, Color, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 1.78:1
Running Time: 1229 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-11-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: HBO Home Video
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Box set; Color; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; Dubbed; NTSC
DVD Reviews of Rome: The Complete Series
DVD Review: Great sets, costumes, music, a worthwhile purchase
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been watching the regular dvd release of Rome for about 3 months now. The first time I saw it I was blown away by the art direction (magnificent sets by Joseph Bennett), the wonderful musical score by Jeff Beal and April Ferry's gorgeous costumes which won many awards. I was also impressed by the courage of a mostly fine cast of actors who are asked in some cases to bare it all and behave in a very uninhibited manner. There is a great deal of nudity, sex, torture, murder, opium smoking, battling armies and gang warfare. There is also a great deal of high humor which balances out the shocking bits. The humorous parts are also the best parts of the scripts which vary in quality depending on who the screenwriter is for the episodes. Bruno Heller, executive producer, wrote most of the 22 episodes but is replaced by others (other producers in most cases) whose abilities with writing dialogue range from pretty good to pretty awful.
The basic story arc over the 2 seasons is good but could have been much better. The series is hobbled by one satellite story revolving around the personal life of the Jew, Timon, Atia of the Julii's household henchman who protects her property, and is also having sex with her when she allows. The sequences involving Timon's personal family life are very boring and superfluous and add nothing to the story. The point of the Timon side plot is apparently that his brother, Levi, has come to Rome from Palestine to kill King Herod who comes to visit and bribe Mark Antony. That story line fizzles out in the end making the whole Timon thing a waste of time.
Taking up time and celluloid to focus on this was detrimental to the overall quality of the series.
For instance: it might have been possible to include several characters who existed in history and were unceremoniously dumped from this series, like Brutus's wife, Portia, and Octavian Caesar's first wife before he married Livia who became the first Empress of Rome.
There are other less obvious flaws mostly resulting from the soap-opera nature of some of the episodes. Even the finest actors in the cast are tripped up by a quantity of fatuous dialogue, especially the overly sentimental Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson). He's a fine actor, handsome, rugged, an ur-macho hunk of a scruffy bear, but his character devolves from being a brutal life-long legionnaire in the 13th legion to a blabber-mouthed, mawkish know-it-all who becomes particularly annoying in the 2nd season.
Pullo's superior officer in the 13th is Lucius Vorenus, played with a wooden, cross-eyed peevishness by Kevin McKidd. He's not much of an actor but he looks fabulous drenched in blood and he's got a penetrating glare that would stop a werewolf in his tracks. McKidd is much more suited to his role as a doctor in the mundane Grey's Anatomy.
The other lead actors are much better. Polly Walker (Atia of the Julii) is the powerful matron star of the show. It took several viewings for me to appreciate the depth of her performance. She's not simply a horny dragon trying to control everything around her by hook or by crook but is a force to be reckoned with in the history of Roman politics, at least as her character is portrayed here. Walker is asked to do some very outrageous things in the course of the series. She is one of the actors who has to bare it all and behave in a most uninhibited manner before the camera. The other great leading performance comes from Ciarán Hinds (Julius Caesar). His murder scene is powerful and moving and he doesn't utter a word. He has an amazing array of facial expressions and is a very subtle actor... fascinating stuff.
I have mixed reactions to James Purefoy's Mark Antony. Perhaps he suffered more than the rest from the concept of his character by the production team. Purefoy is surprisingly excellent playing the vulgar, brutal, egomaniacal, testosterone poisoned general. He too must bare all which he does without self-consciousness. I got a little tired of his inarticulate noises made during sex and domestic arguments. Why do English actors have to pant for 30 seconds, like they've just sprinted a mile, after they've had a sexual climax? The English male has a reputation for being less than ardent in the sack so perhaps this accounts for their inability to strike an authentic chord when they are doing sex scenes in movies. Simon Woods (the older Octavian) is just as bad. He acts like he's having his toenails pulled out post-coitus.
Max Pirkis (Master and Commander) plays Octavian as a younger boy who is, unfortunately, replaced by Simon Woods in the last 8 episodes when he becomes Consul and First Citizen of Rome. This is too bad because Pirkis is 10 times the actor Woods is. In fact wood is the operative word to describe Woods's performance. Whereas Pirkis acts with the flair and confidence of a John Gielgud, Woods comes off as a reptilian automaton. Perhaps he was directed to be like this; whatever the cause his performance is a failure but not as bad as the actors he is surrounded with in the 2nd season.
Octavian Caesar's General, Agrippa, is a priggish drip as performed by Allen Leech, and his speech writer and chief of staff, Maecenas, is bitchily performed by Alex Wyndham. I've renamed these three puppies the Post, the Prig and the Prick. Octavian's (2nd) wife Livia is played as a slutty airhead by Alice Henley. All four of these pivotal characters are failures. Clearly they were cast in this way so as to give the 20-somethings characters they can relate to, as most of the rest of the leads in the series are middle-aged. It was a mistake to dumb-down these people.
You will have to look for enjoyment in the acting of many of the smaller parts. Lydia Biondi (Merulla) is Atia's body slave and communicates so vividly with her facial expressions as to act the more talkative characters under the table. And there are two classic performances from two ancient actors, John Boswell as the Curiel Magistrate and Helen Stirling as the old weaver on the Aventine hill. There is an especially hilarious performance from Camilla Rutherford as Jocasta, the friend of Octavia of the Julii (Octavian's sister). I think Kerry Condon was cast as Octavia because she looks like Max Pirkis. Her acting isn't much but she's lovely to look at; mostly she cries a lot and has a small repertoire of facial expressions that are effective if of limited histrionic usefulness.
Lyndsey Marshal is sensational as Cleopatra. Highly unusual and fascinating. It is a pity more time wasn't spent in Alexandria instead of in Timon's house. Cleopatra's son by Titus Pullo (according to this script) who is supposed to be Julius Caesar's, is played with great skill and with an engaging arrogance by Max Baldry, a stand out among the smaller parts and as competent a young actor as Max Pirkis. And the young, pudgy lad whose name escapes me who plays the child King Ptolomy XIII is a scream.
Lindsay Duncan's Servilia of the Junii is unusually annoying. Servilia is one of the awful bitches in the history of the Western world and in that sense Duncan is quite effective. She causes her son Brutus, played as an effete fop by Tobias Menzies, to throw himself on the sword, as it were, of the family honor as the founders of the Republic, and die simply so that she can have her female revenge on Julius Caesar who dumped her after his wife, Calpurnia (in a brilliant performance by Haydn Gwynne) finds out about their long-time love affair. Duncan is one of those English actresses who rubs one up the wrong way with her precious accent and empty-headed attempts at depth. Again, this may be largely the producer's fault. I suppose her performance must be counted a success because she inspires so much bile in the viewer, but I find myself fast-forwarding through some of her scenes now.
There is much scenery chewing and over-acting from David Bamber, a notably cowardly and two-faced Cicero, and Simon Callow in a cameo role doing his usual bumbling schtick as a senator. I did like Peter Eyre's star cameo as the prosecuting lawyer in Titus Pullo's trial for murder. But most of the appearances of recognizable (by U.S. audiences) U.K. television actors in small parts fall flat.
There are also many fine comparatively unknown secondary actors, too many to list, but they keep this leviathan of a story afloat when it might have sunk under the weight of the questionable production choices and miscasting already mentioned. I can't end without mentioning too horrible performances from too horrible actors; one Duro, the slave/poisoner and King Herod. They had to have been part of a package deal by the casting agency.
At least there is some satisfaction in watching Duro being tortured, stabbed a dozen times and then stuffed down a sewer hole.
Rome could have been a five star event if more care had been taken in the sub-plots and casting of a few crucial characters. And the editing and continuity leave a lot to be desired as well. The interactive features are pretty interesting, though I'd skip the audio versions of the episodes as most of them (with the notable exception of Ray Stevenson's voice-over in one of them) are vapid and annoying. Better to turn on the 'When in Rome' feature which has boxes of information that pop up silently during the episodes and provide some fascinating background information as you go along without drowning out the dialogue as the blabbering audio versions do. The extra special dvd that comes between the two seasons was not really worth the trouble. It is brief and full of a lot of self-congratulatory burbling by the production team.
Still, it is a highly recommendable dvd set and is addictive.
Description of Rome: The Complete Series
Synopsis:Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: NR
Street Date: 11/17/09
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: yes
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.
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