R

Gladiator is rated R, and with good reason. While there's no sex or foul language, the film is a virtual bloodbath.

Sure, there are only a handful of fight scenes, but they're insanely brutal. The big battle scene that opens the film, for example, is full of guys getting run through and getting limbs chopped off.

And that's only the beginning.

The fight scenes in the arena show us pretty much the same kind of gorefest we got used to in Germania. There's a lot of blood, a lot of guys getting stabbed in painful places, and even a little bit of digital animal cruelty.

Gladiator's a bloody, violent film, but that's an important part of the story. The violence not only gives us a sense of the ancient Romans' depraved sense of entertainment, but also an idea of just how high the stakes are for Maximus.