Sergio Leone's first (credited) directorial effort. I'm not all that familiar with the peplum (or "swords and sandals") genre. This may be one of the better ones. Nothing stands out as particularly awful, there are some good action sequences, and it's interesting food for thought to read the Colossus itself as an atomic bomb analogy. I didn't hate watching it. But I didn't really enjoy it much either. The plot moves in fits and starts and doesn't really get cooking until the third act, which eventually becomes this weird deus ex machina clusterf*ck. The performances weren't as hammy as I expected, but they are rather wooden. For every engaging fight there's another that seems to drag on and on, and for every impressive set piece there's another that looks kinda cheap. And the whole thing just feels done by rote, soulless and humorless. Although I think a skilled editor could make a pretty good picture out of this, it would still lack passion. Mildly entertaining, but nowhere near the heights of the "Dollars" trilogy.
Review of The Colossus of Rhodes
