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Julius Caesar 
| 80% Recommended by our customers. Studio: Good Times Video Catalog: DVD Release date: 2004-10-26 Media: DVD released in theatres: 2003-06-29 Running time in minutes: 178 DVD aspect ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Format: NTSC DVD Region code: 1 released in theatres: 2003-06-29 Ean: 0018713818850 Upc: 018713818850  Tip: compare prices with similar DVDsDirector:
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| Fierce general. Skilled orator. Savvy politician. This is Julius Caesar, one of the world’s greatest leaders and ruler of the Roman Empire. His ascent to power is filled with sacrifice, murder and betrayal. With the beautiful Cleopatra on one arm and a sword in the other, Caesar seized control of a vast territory, winning legions of followers, making enemies and creating history, before falling at the hands of Brutus, his most trusted ally. This is an ageless story in an epic presentation unlike anything ever seen before. Julius Caesar: a remarkable man who became an unforgettable legend. COLOR / APPROX, 187 MINUTES. DVD FEATURES: • 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen • 2.0 Dolby Stereo • The Making of Julius Caesar featurette |
| User Reviews: |
 Written on November 29, 2005 Summary: One Of The Best Historical Movies Ever Made I've watched this movie 3 times and enjoy it every time. The script is great, the dialog meaningful and entertaining. The actors are excellent. Jeremy Sisto does a good job as Julius Caesar. Richard Harris chews up the scenery in his role and Christopher Walken steals every scene he is in. I really liked the way this movie was directed, as it went from one interesting scene to the next and there were no dull spots. I also like the fact that they actually built all the sets and recreated ancient ROME, instead of using blue screen and CGI. The marble floors, statues, drapes, the soldiers costumes all gave a sense of high quality production. The movie was filmed in two countries. Disregard the one star review below, that person must be a history snob. It's too bad this movie was only released on cable and DVD, I think it would have been great to see this in the theater. It's better then Alexander or some other recent historic movies. I highly recommend this movie and coming in at just under 3 hours, you definitely get your moneys worth.  Written on September 19, 2005 Summary: "I too can shelter myself under the favor and friendship of Caesar." ... and I don't need shallow films regarding Caesar's facinating life to bring me nearer to him. TNT's production of this mini-series on the life of Julius Caesar leaves much to be desired. This movie is essentially nothing more than a quasi-fictional novela of Caesar and therefore has little substance or historical accuracy. In addition to a contrived screenplay, terrible script, and literally countless historical inaccuracies, the mediocre acting of Jeremy Sisto as Caesar leaves nothing of worth to watch other than good but sparing performances by Richard Harris as Sulla and Christopher Walken as Cato. The character of Caesar is portrayed as oversympathetic because it ommits his lesser known actions that show how his sinister ambitions started at an early age. The film portrays him as a blameless champion of the Roman proles when he was in fact, above all, a shameless opportunist and exhibitionist whose ancient noble family had lapsed into obscurity and poverty. An outcast in the patrician/noble circles, Caesar was anxious to attain political office by demaguoguery and populism if he had to. He chose to affiliate himself with the popular but questionable politics of his uncle Marius and his father-in-law Cinna. Marius was a commoner and populist who had been exiled as a public enemy after attempting several violent but unsuccessful plebiscites in Rome. In an effort to recall Marius, Cinna attempted a failed coup d'etat in Rome and also fled as a public enemy. Cinna and Marius later joined in besieging Rome to overthrow the senatorial majority and so legitimize their impeachment of Sulla from his proconsular command in Asia Minor. Having completed their siege, they proceeded to massacre their political opponents and fellow countrymen with impunity: killing the consul Octavius and placing his head on a pike on the Rostra. Undisturbed by the methods used by his relatives to attain political power, Caesar sought to profit from them instead by taking the office of High Priest made vacant by the suicide of its previous holder who wanted to avoid a sham trial. Julius Caesar was a shrude oppportunist who always appeared to be cordial and generous because it served his interests more than anything else. Despite being one of the greatest military geniuses in history as well as a generous patron to the poor, Caesar was a narcissist who loved to indulge himself in outrageous luxury. Caesar was also considered to be immorally promiscuous even by the Romans themselves (i.e. Brutus' mother)! Caesar was known by his contemporaries for stooping to virtually any form of lechery to get what he wanted. The kingdom of Bythnia was interestingly devised to Rome upon the death of Nicomedes who shortly before had enjoyed numerous and scandalous encounters with Caesar on various nights in his bed chambers. Another example is him later preferring to continue collaborating with the sleazy tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher whom he knew to have been courting his second wife Pompeia. He only divorced his wife to protect his public image with which he was even more obsessed than Pompey The Great. Both he and Pompey needed vast wealth as each loved to display great lavishness in order to surround himself with useful sycophants. Even Sulla himself was said to have read Caesar's dark motives early in 80 B.C. and to have been somewhat frightened of what he saw. After Caesar daringly confronted him with grievences as to the political restrictions being imposed on him for his family's associations with the chief instigators of the civil war, Sulla was said to have exclaimed, "Beware! I see the faces of one thousand Mariuses in this one boy!" In short, Caesar was an overly ambitious political opportunist even by the liberal standards of his contemporaries who were intoxicated with political ambition already. He was a man who had few mores or ethics he was unwilling to part with if it could get him what he wanted even if the methods to be used were to the detriment of the--albeit imperfect--democratic institutions of his nation. As for the supporting cast, Sulla played by Richard Harris was also falsely portrayed. Although Sulla was the arch-enemy of Marius, his proconsular post in Asia Minor against Mithridates was illegally removed from him by Marius who coveted the command for himself despite his being old, decrepid, and senile. Sulla eventually returned with his own army and entered Rome to restore order: the supporters of Marius and Cinna were in turn proscribed. Unlike Caesar who eventually bribed his way to permanent dictatorship, Sulla was appointed dictator due to real emergencies that he didn't really bring about. Caesar's relatives Cinna and Marius had clearly started and lost the civil war and died with most of their supporters in full flight, dead, or under siege. Sulla reorganized Rome's political institutions along more conservative lines to prevent the demagoguery of populists like Marius and Cinna from occurring again. He also undertook legal reforms to limit corruption and the power of the tribunes in carrying out plebiscites to circumvent the Senate. Sulla was not the mad dictator as shown in the film lusting only for power and he wasn't murdered by his opponents. Sulla honorably resigned his post as dictator after one year in 81 B.C. and died in 77 B.C. from a terminal illess and a wound he received while killing one of his creditors. The funniest character distortion in this film is that of Cato played by Christopher Walken. The film makes Cato Uticensis a major political player as early as Sulla's dictatorship and that is quite comical since, when Sulla returned to Rome in 82 B.C. , Cato would have been a very young and unusual member of the Senate at only 13 years of age and not even wearing his toga virilis! The real Cato only became a power in Rome and the Senate over twenty years later as an outspoken opponent of the First Triumvirate and Caesar. The film instead makes him an opponent to Sulla and later Caesar played by 60+ year old Christopher Walken who never seems to age one bit despite the passage of over 30 years until Cato's stoically defiant suicide in Utica. One of the strangest choices in this film was to completely omit the existence of Marcus Licinius Crassus. This was unfortunate because Crassus' presence and eventual absence from Caesar's life is what brought him power and eventually forced him towards a final clash with Pompey and his supporters. Crassus was the single biggest power broker in Rome who was continuously trying to outwit Pompey The Great's ambitions. Caesar was a clever manipulator and often played Crassus against Pompey knowing of their animosities for one another. Caesar was often the convenient mediator between the two and would help them make amends to suit his ends. A good part of Caesar's safety and political advancements upon returning to Rome were due to Crassus probably even more than Pompey. Caesar was considered an enemy of the state after Sulla's dictatorship because of his family connections to Cinna and Marius and so most Roman aristocrats refused to associate with him or sponsor his political ambitions. Unlike Pompey whose recent noble lineage made him fear the scorn of the optimates and the nobility, Crassus was from the Licinii clan that had been well established since the Early Republic. As with Pompey, Crassus had populist agendas opposed by the nobility's conservative elements but, unlike Pompey, he didn't fear the nobility's disapproval and backlash as much: he therefore had less problems than Pompey in parting with the optimates and supporting Caesar's populist agendas. Crassus was indeed a huge political and financial backer for Caesar. Plutarch notes that Caesar was about to find himself in dire straits with his creditors prior to going to his Spanish governorship and that it was Crassus who paid for a huge balance of 800 talents/19,200,000 sesterces. To put this amount into perspective, both Cicero and Caesar bought luxurious villas from Crassus on the Palantine (Rome's Beverly Hills so to speak) for no more than 2 million sesterces. Caeasar was in serious need of cash and would probably have been barred from his governorship if not his senatorial station had not Crassus quickly payed this vast sum. Crassus had many mines and clients in Spain that seemed to be in jeopardy there due to Pompey having encroached himself there while fighting Sertorius. Caesar needed cash that Crassus had conveniently available as he had problems in Spain where Caesar was to govern. Caesar needed Crassus as a sponsor to appear more respectable in the Senate given his shady background. Caesar's fortune was therefore really a product of his collaboration with Crassus more than anything else. Caesar's importance in Roman affairs was rather minimal until Pompey and Crassus sponsored him. It was primarily Crassus who was the power behind the First Triumvirate and it was mainly he who promoted Caesar's command in Gaul. Both he and Crassus were the ones who sought to enfranchize Northern Italy. The film also attributes the victory against Spartacus to Pompey when it was unquestionably Crassus who ended the Slave Revolt: Pompey arrived with Lucullus at the last minute and did some mopping up. It was Crassus who had 6000 slaves from the revolt crucified from Capua to Rome along the Appian way and it was he who received an ovation for ending the Servile War, not Pompey: Pompey was simultaneously celebrating a full triumph for his defeat of Sertorius and Perperna in Spain which had nothing to do with the Servile War. Caesar later provided Crassus with over 4000 Gallic horsemen to help him in his disastrous Parthian campaign. Most important of all, the direct reason the Civil War erupted between the Pompeian and Caesarian factions was Crassus' untimely death in Parthia which completely dismantled his entire political clientelle and power base in Rome leaving a huge power vacuum in its mafiaesque republican system of clan patronage and syndication. This is important because all classical sources on Crassus, even as negative as they are, agree that Crassus had by far the most influence and power in Rome even after Pompey and Caesar had surpassed him in actual liquidity. This means that Crassus had the vastest and most solid investments in the Republic and, most importantly, the most solid connections with persons of influence amongst the commercial equestrian and plebeian classes as well as the individually silent but politically numerous lower nobility in the Senate(e.g. Caesar.) Upon his death, his youngest son Marcus was too young to take the reigns of his vast clientelle network and just fell in the ranks by joining Caesar along with most of his father's clients. Had Crassus not died unexpectedly with his eldest son Publius at Carrhae, the radical political alignments by his dependents mainly to the Caesarian faction would probably not have happened and civil war with the Pompeians would have almost certainly been avoided. The irony then of choosing to exclude Crassus as a character is that the film essentially shoots itself in the foot. The film redacted the single most important cataclysm towards what amounts to be the climax of both the film and history: the clash between Caesar and Pompey's republican supporters. What is comical is that the rushed and vacuous plot inserted in place of the history of Caesar and Crassus was not only historically ludicrous but was so poorly written that it simply failed to build up or accentuate any of the tensions it it had hoped to portray by making the redaction in the first place. The true political intrigue between the shady Caesar and his fellow triumvirs along with the tragic consequences for each of them is interesting enough as it is to make a great movie: I don't see how some historically illiterate low-ranked Hollywood TV writer could make it more interesting than that. A film that would truly capture the 'Spirit of Late Republican Rome' and Caesar as one previous reviewer commented would not have excluded Crassus, beautified Caesar's sinister character, or reduced Roman history to an infantile depiction showing purely the settling of a personal grudge between Pompey and Caesar. The film wouldn't try to fit the characters of real and fascinating historical figures into trite 2-dimensional television characters that are crudely drafted to meet the limited needs of its infantile screenplay. A true film on the subject would instead take the challenge of the real Caesar and, with some reasonable liberties permitted, make a film that is accurate, interesting, revealing, and moving to watch concerning the life of one of the single most important founders of modern Europe and Western civilization. Boiling his character and deeds down to the form of a contrived and almost purely fictional novela is beyond my comprehension. The only reason I can see for doing something so reductive is that it was done to match the talent collectively possessed by all of those who were involved in devising the screenplay and in charge of the direction in this film. This movie drowns in its anachronisms and historical inaccuracies that are not merely pardonable omissions or alterations but simply absurd distortions in events, situations, and characters. Even the equally absurd distortions in Kubrick's 'Spartacus' are pardonable simply on the outstanding script, acting, and direction of which this film has none to boast of. In terms of acting here, the only performances that stand out are those by Richard Harris as Sulla and Christopher Walken as Cato and their cameos are simply too brief to make a real positive impact on this worthless pile of reel. Jeremy Sisto seemed too uncertain and shy to come across as a Caesar. Sisto doesn't even look anything like Caesar anyway as Caesar was described by ancient sources as having blonde hair. Caesar was said to be of generally frail health and certainly not Herculean in physique but he wasn't the worn out coat depicted in this film either. For these reasons, I wouldn't recommend this mini-series for a good film on Caesar. This production is even less faithful to Roman history than Howard Fast's 'Spartacus' and that's pretty bad: at least Fast had enough literary acumen to properly include Crassus in his story even though, at least by the poor standards of the writers in this film, he didn't really have to either I suppose. Written on August 4, 2005 Summary: one star for effort This film is so egregiously historically inacurrate. They have taken the world's greatest Roman and convoluted his history, and his dignitas. I am disgusted with the screenwriters. However, Hollywood will be Hollywood. The will continue to screw things up so bad just for the sake of entertainment. They nearly forty years of history and cram it all into a mere ten. They made an effort to make it look like Rome, but far too many things were off. The true story of Gaius Julius Caesar's rise to power and his assasination will take SIX films, all of which, two and half to three hours a piece. This is truly a piece of crap. For starters, Gauis Julius Caesar was blonde. If you can't get that right, why even try? Written on August 1, 2005 Summary: Captures the spirit of late Republican Rome No one expects commercial films to portray ancient history accurately, and this is no exception. However, the film is largely true to the spirit of Rome at the end of the Republic, with outstanding sets and costumes. As noted by other reviewers, much is condensed or omitted. The central figure of Crassus, whose patronage was essential to Caesar's rise, is entirely absent. In effect, Crassus is merged with Pompey in this film, and the triumvirate of Pompey/Crassus/Caesar is reduced to a partnership between Pompey and Caesar. Also omitted is any direct reference to Spartacus, and here his Slave Revolt is merged with Pompey's campaign to clear the Mediterranean of pirates. At a more personal level, the film omits all references to Caesar's philandering (which included the mother of Brutus) as well as his balding with advancing age. And in this film Caesar is murdered in the old Senate-house in the Forum, not the new complex built by Pompey outside the city walls. On the positive side, Rome itself as depicted in the sets (mostly constructed in Malta, not digitally generated) is convincing: note that Rome in Caesar's time was largely built of brick and was not endowed with huge buildings or large open spaces. The military are also convincingly depicted, with the exception that the cavalry in the film use stirrups (but it is difficult today to find equestrian actors who can ride without stirrups). And there is much to please the sharp-eyed. For example, although the dialog does not mention Caesar's role as chief priest (Pontifex Maximus) and guardian of the Vestal Virgins, we see the Vestals officiating at his marriage to Calpurnia. And although the office of Consul is not really explained, we see the lectors and other paraphernalia in the background. Such details reward the careful observer. I do not agree with other reviewers who have written that ancient Rome is better depicted in such blockbuster films as Ben Hur, Quo Vadis and Gladiator. All of these tend toward hyperbole in sets and spectacle. Gladiator is highly accurate in its recreation of the Coliseum, but not in the Forum and other oversized public buildings. Ben Hur and Quo Vadis exaggerate even more: in the time (mid first century CE) when these two films are set, almost none of the great public buildings whose ruins still stand in Rome had yet been constructed. The most accurate film portrayal of the heart of imperial Rome is in The Fall of the Roman Empire, which faithfully follows what we know of the layout of the Forum and the Capitol. But that was the city more than two centuries after Caesar. For a glimpse of the Rome of the first century BCE, I enjoyed this TNT film. Written on July 12, 2005 Summary: The Glory of Rome! I think this is a very wonderful movie. It recreated the story of Juluis Caesar very well. Although I would have chosen different actors, the ones that were used did a very good job. There were a few historical mistakes though. The leader of the Gauls was acctually strangeled, not stabbed. Caesar was killed on the steps of the senate, not inside. I would have liked to see more on Caesar's love affair with Cleopatra. |
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| Collectible price | - | $14.94 | - | $25.00 | - | - |
| Catalog | DVD | DVD | DVD | DVD | DVD | DVD |
| Release date | 2004-10-26 | 2005-01-04 | 2005-09-06 | 2006-11-07 | 2005-02-01 | 2005-11-29 |
| Media | DVD | DVD | DVD | DVD | DVD | DVD |
| released in theatres | 2003-06-29 | 2003 | 1992 | 1953-06-04 | 2004-03-14 | 2005-06-28 |
| Running time in minutes | 178 | 178 | 192 | 121 | 50 | 257 |
| DVD aspect ratio | 1.33:1 | 1.33:1 | 1.78:1 | 1.33:1 | 1.33:1 | 1.78:1 |
| Audience Rating | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | R (Restricted) | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | NR (Not Rated) | NR (Not Rated) | NR (Not Rated) |
| Format | NTSC | AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC | AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, NTSC | Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC | Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC |
| DVD Region code | 1 | 99 | 99 | 1 | 1 | - |
| Ean | 0018713818850 | 9781404972193 | 9781404991040 | 0012569659186 | 9781419804885 | 0786936297850 |
| Book Isbn | - | 1404972196 | 1404991042 | - | 141980488X | - |
| Upc | 018713818850 | 043396096554 | 043396118997 | 012569659186 | 794051218025 | 786936297850 |
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